tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40888013457629821572024-03-13T06:16:30.532-04:00what was yours is everyone’s from now oneveryonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-12379947246869788592012-04-22T21:55:00.003-04:002012-04-22T22:04:34.942-04:00It's gonna be a long night, it's gonna be alright. . .<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cTsw4g-cxgQ" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">I heard “Nightshift” at the Price Chopper this afternoon.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in"> I don't think that I can name any other post-Lionel Ritchie Commodores songs. I like how this song sutures a tribute to these two recently passed (at the time) singers, Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson to working class listening practice. The feeling that it tries to evoke—the importance of the radio's company to getting through a long lonely nightshift—is powerful. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The song reinforces the notion that these two artists will live on in those crucial late night listens, which I sweet, but I think there is also a mournfulness in it, a compressed and softened form of blues-moan that assuages grief through its expression, that, in its mechanistic undertones, echoes with worker alienation—ghost voices put to work long after the bodies that produced them are dust.</p>everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-33758882031704138162011-12-24T21:28:00.003-05:002011-12-24T21:35:24.429-05:00One Song I am Feeling - Untitled ("Shut Up") - R. 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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">People are referring to this song as “Shut Up,” but as far as I know it is as-of-yet untitled.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Regardless, I am loving it and listening to it frequently in the couple of weeks I have been aware of its existence. <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/44595-listen-to-r-kellys-new-song-about-his-tonsil-surgery-no-really/">As Pitchfork says</a>, "This may be the very first song ever written to address tonsil surgery-related haters."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wjEG6DZzcB0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">It probably bears mentioning that I kind of love R. Kelly.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I would say “unabashedly,” except that I am a bit abashed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was ambivalent until my exposure to “Trapped in the Closet,” which struck me as the work of an idiot savant…but not really.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Here’s the thing about R. Kelly, he has perfected a kind of unaware awareness or perhaps I have that reversed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At some level I think he sees himself as a genius—just watch his commentary on “Trapped in the Closet,” if you don’t think so—but at the same time his seeming lack of filter, the straightforward earnestness delivery of his lyrics suggest that there is no depth there, or rather you might say there is depth to that singular surface layer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Someone else used the Italian term “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura">sprezzatura</a><em><span style="font-style:normal;mso-bidi-font-style:italic">”</span></em> (a kind of artful carelessness that is so effective it obscures even its own artfulness) which seems apt, but personally I think of R.Kelly as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">post-ironic</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www2.citypaper.com/music/story.asp?id=13709">It probably also bears mentioning that some folks are troubled by the idea of R. Kelly as a dope, someone who’s popularity among a certain hipster-set is based on the fact that he is unintentionally hilarious</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I agree. I think these folks conflate earnestness with the unintentiality of the humor, but I think that it is possible to sincerely enjoy R. Kelly both as music and for the campiness that suffuses his work.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This latest song is a perfect example. I find it impossible to believe that R, Kelly does not realize that the bizarre talking/crooning self-reflexive narrative songs can be funny.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And yet, that humor—while often reinforced through his absurd metaphors—arises from the natural talk-y way people have of conversing or even speechifying and is not associated with song except as a manifestation of vamping. He makes the song feel like one long ad-lib in the tradition of a kind of testifying/singing in R&B and gospel.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>R, Kelly, however, brings it to a whole new level, making a traditional part of a song into the whole song itself—restructuring through sampling a fragment of a form repetitively.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Exaggeration can be funny. I mean, John Coltrane <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">exaggerated </i>when he played that sax, and some of those violent blarts(!) and breathy broken tones encourage nothing less than laughter, measured in equal parts of joy and discomfort.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The expansiveness of Kelly’s diction—the way he inflates the melody with long words that normally defy musicality—is also funny, but ultimately I hear it as if he is risking being made fun of in order to be earnest. Furthermore, you can’t ignore the role Kelly’s hyper-specificity plays in making his songs work. Perhaps this is how he seems able to completely remove any doubt regarding a unity between the song’s speaker and his own persona, even when he is singing in the roles of others. In other words, R. Kelly’s talent is in his ability to perform an erasure at the moment of singing, sinking invisibly into R. Kelly the character and making us forget that there will always be a difference between the R. Kelly we hear and the R. Kelly who sings.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In this latest song then, when he directly addresses his fans and detractors, he is doing so as R. Kelly would be expected to do it. Listen to how well he does it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Ultimately it comes down to this: Listen to how well R. Kelly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">does</i> R. Kelly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The production is perfect and I love the little touches throughout, the finger snaps, the backing gospel-like chorus, the building piano, the pause and crumple of paper right before getting into the list of “serious issues” he has to talk/sing about, the “wooh-hoo-hoo” after singing “crying mad tears,” the subtle emotional breaks in his voice, the call backs as a verse closes on the refrain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>R. Kelly’s voice is on point. Listen to how his voice slowly builds in a gospel flavor in the second verse, or the ad-libbed vocal filigree in the final chorus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It really does give me shivers. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And at the same time, he is singing “Tell them, Shut up!,” which seems stupid divorced of the context of his voice and the rest of the song. It is banal without the sincerity that R. Kelly’s performance lends it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Again, I am not saying he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> sincere, but that the performance is… There is a subtle difference there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He can make me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">believe</i> he believes it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Post-ironic means not that he is devoid of irony, but rather since any potential irony remains in doubt, the form and content must be taken at face value.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is earnestness so well played that I think a lot of other popular music pales in comparison. A lot of popular music fails at obfuscating the fact that the performers are not faking it quite well enough to convince us that they really believe in the generalized platitudes of most popular songs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Anyway, I am just really feeling this song.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p>everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-62293678286455206502011-12-18T14:11:00.004-05:002011-12-18T14:36:30.641-05:00Sounding Out! Catching Up. . .I have not updated this blog in quite a while, but nor because I have stopped listening to music (or in some cases even writing about it).<br /><br />For example, I am now a regular contributor to <a href="http://soundstudiesblog.com/">Sounding Out!</a>, "a [b]log [that] provides an outlet for ruminations on the role of sound and listening in our contemporary culture." So while I am not always writing about music for this blog, music does come into it.<br /><br />For example, I wrote the popular, but much-maligned "<a href="http://soundstudiesblog.com/2011/09/12/in-defense-of-auto-tune/">In Defense of Auto-tune</a>," and a reflection on one of my least favorite songs, entitled "<a href="http://soundstudiesblog.com/2010/11/29/aint-got-the-same-soul/">Ain't Got the Same Soul</a>."<br /><br />I hope to be writing a piece for next Halloween on Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and black sexuality, but before then I have to write to other posts, and probably one will be about music.<br /><br />In addition, I have been tweeting about my "AlphaiPod" project, in which on my commute I listen to the contents of my iPod in alphabetical order by album title. I noticed that I tended to listen to the same sets of albums depending on my mood, but there was music languishing on my iPod that I hardly (if ever) listen to. So I made myself listen from the beginning and hear what was really on there. Some folks have asked me, "Why alphabetical by album and not artist?" Who wants to have to force themselves to listen to every album by a particular artist? Because of the way I am listening (while driving) that could mean days or even weeks of the same artist with no break. I am not sure I could handle that for most artists.<br /><br />And yet, my next planned project is just that: I plan to listen to every Prince studio album in the order they were released.<br /><br />Anyway, if you use Twitter be sure to follow me: https://twitter.com/#!/commutemusic<br /><br />I hope to add some more posts to this blog over the coming winter break, but at the very least I should be posting links to my music-related posts to Sounding Out!everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-58463342004760699892009-10-22T18:00:00.001-04:002009-10-22T18:01:48.212-04:005 Songs I'm Feeling5 Songs I'm Feeling:<br /><br /><b>"She's a Woman"</b> - I know that I just (well, not <i>just</i> - my last music post was in late June) wrote a whole thing about two Beatles' albums, but having just gotten the re-mastered version of the "Past Masters" double CD (including rarities and singles) there were a few songs I have never owned a personal copy of. "She's a Woman" was the b-side to "I Feel Fine" and is among my favorite Beatles songs because it strikes me as classic and I am amused to no end by the rhythm and rhyme-scheme. And there is something appealingly crunchy about the timbre of the guitar. It is not an overly complex song, but there are some musical aspects that appeal to me, like how the guitars just hit the backbeat staccato the whole time, and how the piano doubles the melody, trailing out after each sung phrase. But there is also earnest playfulness of the lyrics, "My love don't give me presents! I know that she's no peasant!" and Paul McCartney's straining voice, trying hard to emulate Little Richard. Like I said before, the rhyming is pleasing and cute and submerged into the lyrical phrase so it is kind of broken and suggests a jerkiness with the rhythm, "She will never make me jealous / gives me all her time as well as / lovin', don't ask me why." Or, "Turn me on when I get lonely / People tell me that she's only / foolin', I know she isn't." I can listen to this song over and over, and finally let us not forget that few things in this world sound as good as Lennon and McCartney's harmonies - their voices together are greater than the sum of their parts and tickles some aesthetic sense I cannot pinpoint.<br /><br /><b>"Mountains"</b> - I want to avoid saying this is Prince's best song because it isn't (necessarily), it just sometimes feels that way in the middle of listening to it, and I am listening to it right now. The song has a full sound that comes in after a few reverb-y snare drums and echoing handclaps that punctuate a song built so that it rides a short and simple progression of low-end chords on the piano. Prince sings at the high end of his register (but not the highest), setting up a proposition, that is, the obstacle presented by 17 mountains surrounded by the sea (17 being a number important in Prince's oeuvre) and "the Devil's" suggestion that there will be only more obstacles (mountains) and that "the sea would 1 day overflow with all your tears / And love will always leave u lonely." But then the refrain comes in, full of a chorus of voices (most of them Prince) to bolster the lead vocal and accented by the horn section. It sounds almost like a gospel refrain, but without the traditional gospel harmonic structure. I cannot emphasize how the sound is simultaneously <i>full</i> and muted. . . There is humming synthesized drone deep in the mix and the guitars fill up the mid-section. The fullness of the mid and low ends makes Prince's voice seem to float that much more above it all, and yet never seems distinct from the song, but rather anchored by it. In the second verse, Prince’s voice starts out alone again, but the chorus comes back to back him up on the lyrics "Africa divided, hijack in the air" and never leaves. And then there is the chorus itself (that is, the refrain) which is nothing complex (Prince's songs are rarely lyrically complex), but reaffirms that gospel feel despite its staccato delivery, "It's only mountains and the sea / Love will conquer if you just believe." The first line is then repeated more melodically, and we then hear "There's nothing greater than u and me." As I once mentioned in a post about "instructions" in music, or the meta-aspects of music in songs, I love them, and there is a point in this song when Prince calls to the band, "Guitars and drums on the 1!" and we get just that for a few measures, so we once again get that spacey feels of the drums and the pogo-boing of the bass guitar part. There is a nice little bridge that deconstructs the melody (while keeping that backing drum and builds back to the echoey handclap and the boinging bass and the outro) and there are also lots of little grunts and spoken encouragements that act as a kind of glue. I really can't do it justice. Go out and listen to it and/or check out this live version here: http://www.totallyfuzzy.net/ourtube/prince/mountains-live-video_a5293bb66.html<br /><br /><b>"I'll Fight"</b> - Off of Wilco's latest album, "Wilco (the album)," this song opens with an acoustic guitar that plays out the main melody which is reinforced (once Jeff Tweedy starts singing) by the repetitiveness of the introductory lyric. "I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go for you, I'll fight, I'll fight, I'll fight for you, I'll kill, I'll kill, I'll kill for you, I will. I will. I will." The repetitiveness underscores a certain sense of plaintive earnestness, or perhaps a better word is resignation to fate and to a role. The second time through the "fighting" turns to "I'll die for you." The rest of the song tells the story of the loss felt by those left behind, but how time goes on, wounds are healed, and ultimately nothing changes - except of course that everything <i>has</i> changed. As Tweedy sings, <br /><blockquote>And you'll sing to yourself<br />The rising falling melody<br />That you could never read<br />Without the choirs' lead<br />Still alone and lost in deep<br />And your soul will not be free. </blockquote> The song is a painful one and its sense of lament is reinforced by the use of an organ (and the way everything is stripped back down to that acoustic guitar in the interlude). I can't help but think of my nephew when I hear this song and the ideological apparatuses that bolstered not only his enlistment in the army, but the myth of the efficacy of war, the complacency of those of us still here and how it all leads to pain and loss no matter what let ourselves believe about the reasons that it all happens. <br /><br /><b>"Aquellos Ojos Verdes"</b> - Ibrahim Ferrer. This <i>bolero</i> begins with a dramatic brush of piano that suggests the main melody accompanied by more literal brushes on the ride cymbal. And then Ibrahim's distinctive voice comes in "Aquellos ojos verdes. . ." The reason this song has been on my mind, aside from the obvious. . . (Guess who has green eyes?) is because of the treachery of translation, and the lyrics which are so beautiful in Spanish but seem trite and unoriginal in English - Well, I guess they are not necessarily so original in Spanish either, but the construction itself leads to connotations that I cannot translate and make sense to me as someone immersed in the Spanish language since birth (I like to joke that English is not my first language, but neither is Spanish - they both came second). In particular, I think of the word "tristesas," which very literally can be translated to "sadnesses," but has a suggestion closer to "tragedies." Except of course, that "tragedies" already has a translatable word, "tragedias," and anyway "tragedy" is simultaneously too powerful and too facetious a word to be of use to me. "Sadnesses" doesn't quite work either because it makes the sad feeling into the noun, while "tristestas" suggests an event (thus the suggestion of "tragedy"). Anyway, it is a beautiful song and I recommend listening to it.<br /><br /><b>"Brooklyn"</b> - In the realm of hip-hop Mos Def's "Black on Both Sides" is already old, having come out in 1999. Then again, in the realm of the culture industry anything 10 years old is considered old, but 10 years hardly seems like any time at all to me. And according to my own naturalized chronometer if I think about 1999 or 2000 I would say it feels like three or four years ago. Weird. Anyway, being here in Binghamton now, I find myself going back to this song to remember Brooklyn in both my romanticized nostalgia vein and also as a means of complicating my relationship to the "broken land". The song opens with an homage to the opening of Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge." "Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in / Let's hear it for Brooklyn." The song is then broken up into three sections, so it is kind of like a suite. The first section sounds kind of laconic with this great sampled loop in the mix of a handclap and someone calling out "Go Brooklyn!" and the lyrics like most in the song hit a nostalgic note. In fact, my critique of the song comes from the fact that the three sections while sonically representing the plurality of Brooklyn do not thematically (lyrically) cohere among themselves. The second section also has a looped sampled sound of strings and a voice repeating "We live in Brooklyn, baby. . ." that leads to the introduction of a new rhyme scheme (or in the parlance of hip-hop, "style" - something KRS-One often raps about doing and then does it mid-song). This section has one of my favorite lines, "One year as a resident, deeper sentiment / Shout out 'Go Brooklyn!', they representin’ it." Because I am that person that at a concert or other event that calls out when Brooklyn is mentioned. It also has the reference to Brooklyn as "a planet" that one hears in a lot of hip-hop songs from/about the area and a way of refering to the motherland that I personally use often. A couple of weekends ago I was back in Brooklyn and I commented that I feel when returning there the way some of my relatives must feel upon returning to Puerto Rico. I feel an irrational nationalism about Brooklyn, and thus lyrics like, ". . .generals of armies / When it's time to form, just call me / And let this song be, playin’ loud and long, bee / If you love Bucktown STRONGLY!" The third section (which has more of a disjointed rhythm and high-pitched descending scale) is notable for a less idealized view of the borough, "crack babies tryin’ to find where they mama's at / It's off the handle, black / wit big police scandals that / Turn into actions screenplays sold to Miramax," and "The doorstep where the dispossessed posted at / Dope fiends out at Franklin Ave sellin’ zovarax." The song's transitions means that when the next track on the album, "Habitat," it is hard to tell that a new song has begun especially since they are thematically so similar. Check it out.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-16013646392371981572009-06-25T15:22:00.000-04:002009-06-25T15:23:11.024-04:00Rubber Revolving SoulI've been listening to a lot of the Beatles lately. I go through cycles and phases with different artists, but the Beatles are one of those groups that come back into heavy rotation every year or so - perhaps I should say <em>heavier</em> rotation - but regardless, it is not uncommon that there be a few weeks where I am likely to listen to one or more Beatles albums a day. <br /><br />The other day on my way to work I listened to <em>Rubber Soul</em> and really enjoyed it, but put on <em>Revolver</em> immediately after and once again came to the conclusion I have long held: <em>Revolver</em> is just clearly a better album - it is a more impressive set of songs. This is not to say that <em>Rubber Soul</em> is bad. It is still great, but <em>Revolver</em> is better. <br /><br />In truth, they really work well together - not quite bookends, but more like dividing line, as <em>Rubber Soul</em> despite a few touches that fore-shadow the coming Beatles' sound, has more in common with the older sound, the old rock n'roll sound that came along with covers of Chuck Berry songs and "Twist and Shout." This is not to say that "A Hard Day's Night" and "HELP!" don't have inklings of that later sound and aren't great records in their own right, but it is pretty clear to me that "Revolver" pushes towards what would come in their more psychedelic and experimental phase - stuff on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "The Beatles" (aka "The White Album").<br /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/osito71/pic/0002b7dz" hspace="4" vspace="4" align="right"> Aside from the sound of the albums (they both <em>sound</em> great and have those classic Lennon/McCartney synergetic harmonies), I think part of the issue is I find the songs on <em>Rubber Soul</em> to be lyrically simpler and more problematic. Sure, a song like "Drive My Car" is cute, what with its simulated car/traffic sounds in the staccato delivery of some of the lyrics ("But I've got a dri-ver and that's a start!") and the sexual innuendo of the hook - and, "Norwegian Wood" is a classic song, certainly inspired by Dylan in ambiguous content (though not quite in sound like <em>Help</em>'s "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" - more of a folky Birds sound).<br /><br />But then there are songs like "You Won't See Me," which are not much more than boring in my estimation - though I can't help but think of Lennon's backing "Ooh la la" as kind of sarcastic. "Nowhere Man" is similarly boring, both melodically and in content. This may be a case of it feeling dated in message with its misplaced optimism. The song just seems like a particular product of a 60s mentality of "consciousness" that really doesn't say anything in and of itself and seems to have never changed.<br /><br />"The Word" may suffer from a similar problem, but I love the way it sounds - the harmonies, the guitars, the shaker. <br /><br />I will leave aside the banality of "Michelle." Perhaps if they had gotten Ringo to sing it, it might have been salvaged by kitschiness. "What Goes On" works because of that countrified sound that goes along with Ringo's voice. And "I'm Looking Through You" is a classic break-up song. Love it. I love McCartney's lead vocals and the little organ/guitar licks between the verses.<br /><br />I usually skip over "In My Life" - some people list this as their favorite Beatles' song, but it seems too treacly, what with the sentiment and the fake clavichord. I have <em>never</em> liked it.<br /><br />But most problematic of all these songs has to be "Run for Your Life." Whoa. I mean, I love the song - The <em>sound</em> of it, that is, but from the very first line "Well, I'd rather see you dead, little girl / Than to be with another man" it is kind of cringe-worthy. What amazes me most, I think, is not just the blatant violence towards women that lyrics suggest, but how acceptable it really is in a mainstream pop song. The title of the song becomes even more ominous when you consider how many women have to do just that, run for their lives, from men who claim to love them. "Baby, I'm determined / And I'd rather see you dead." Of course, the acceptability of violence towards women in music ("Hey Joe," anyone?) and in our culture (many cultures. . . <em>most</em> cultures?) is nothing new and definitely not a thing of the past (Chris Brown, anyone?) - but I have to shake my head when I think about how many years of my youth I heard "Run for your Life" and similar songs without thinking twice about their message.<br /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/osito71/pic/0002a818" align="left" vspace="4" hspace="5"> <em>Revolver</em>, on the other hand, is full of song after great song. Sure, some are better than others, but overall I find them to be more challenging and experimental in content and construction. From the bizarre intro to "Taxman" to the strings of "Eleanor Rigby" to the east Indian sitar intro and drone of "Love You To" and the background tapeloops of "Tomorrow Never Knows," <em>Revolver</em> does things almost none of the songs on <em>Rubber Soul</em> do, and when it does, it does them better.<br /><br />"I'm Only Sleeping" is a great example, the echoey jangling guitar accented with backward splices of guitar playing (and a "solo" done in similar style) in a song about nothing more than sleeping, not a cliched love song (not that there aren't love song cliches on this albums). It is one of my all time favorite Beatles songs and has a nice taste of Paul McCartney's understated and underrated bass-playing. (oh, and I love the background "oooohs"). <br /><br />Sure, "Here, There and Everywhere" is one of the boring tracks and "Yellow Submarine" is an overplayed kiddie track, but that can be forgiven - few records are perfect (and <em>no</em> Beatles records are, it is just that for the most part even their warts are productive in the broader view) - but then there is another of my all-time faves, "She Said She Said," which opens with one of those classic Beatles sound guitar riffs, has a weird high-pitched whine, and lyrics inspired by tripping on acid with Peter Fonda. I love the weird lurching rhythmic delivery of those lyrics accentuated with awkward repetition of the same words.<br /><br />"Good Day Sunshine" is sneakily fantastic song - deceptive - but I love the Beach Boys-drenched harmonies/repetition of "good day sunshine" and the pianola strolling piano sound. McCartney, however, supposedly credits The Lovin' Spoonful - but <em>Pet Sounds</em> came out in May of '66 and <em>Revolver</em> was recorded through June of '66 (and released in August, which blows me away) and <em>Pet Sounds</em> is Paul's favorite album - "Good Vibrations" influence can be heard in there.<br /><br />"For No One" might be a sad love song and the melody may be a bit hackneyed, but the french horn is lovely and the approach to the subject is as sweet and heartfelt as "Dr. Robert" is a bouncy rock n'roll tune with some of the most "classic" sounding Lennon/McCartney harmonies (on "You're a new and better man / He helps you to understand / He does everything he can") - a song about their doctor friend who introduced folks to acid. <br /> <br /> I almost didn't mention "I Want to Tell You" (I have not mentioned every single song on these records), but I figured that George deserves more attention, and it includes not only a classic Beatles riff, but the almost dissonant harmonies and the pounding two-feel piano rhythm is that kind of jerky-awkwardness that makes the song come alive and helps to underscore the content, explaining the inability of the song's speaker to quite express what it is they want to say about how he feels about a relationship.<br /><br />"Got To Get You Into My Life" is brought to life by the horns and one of the best pop song hooks of all time. And yeah, those "Ooohs" at the beginning of the lines that lead to the powerful chorus are fantastic. It is perfect example of why Paul McCartney is one of my favorite songwriters of all time and really (kind of) my favorite Beatle. <br /><br />Aside: This song will always remind me of a very rainy day in New Paltz in 1996 or '97. I was shopping in town and two guys were ducked under a store awning, one with a walkman, obviously listening to this song and singing along loudly in a nice voice, when suddenly the other guy starts singing a harmony with him and I walked up and spontaneously started a third harmony. We just stood there and sang the song aloud, beaming and having a great time and when we were done, nodded to each other with a smile and went our own way.<br /><br />"Tomorrow Never Knows" is another of my faves (and I guess that makes <em>Revolver</em> win over <em>Rubber Soul</em> right there, more of my favorite Beatles songs come from that record than probably any other). As I said before, it includes all sorts of tape loops and the voice is amplified through a speaker normally used for an organ - just the perfect example of the kind of successful experimentation that makes <em>Revolver</em> the great record it is. And I love that opening line, "Turn off your mind / Relax and float down stream".<br /><br />I don't have much to say in conclusion, except to reiterate, listening to these two records back to back, <em>Revolver</em> stands out as the clearly better one - though there is still a quality that resonates in both of them (having been recorded and released so closely) that gives the impression that they are a kind of double-album (and I have seen an interview with George Harrison where he said as much, claiming that he often got confused as to which songs were on which). It may not be fair to try to make the distinction I am making here, but I have made it anyway - and the truth is that while I will likely listen to both these records countless more time in my life, I will probably listen to <em>Revolver</em> a hell of a whole lot more.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-91753172114539231062009-04-27T15:25:00.002-04:002009-04-27T15:28:11.945-04:00Makes Me Weak and Knocks Me Off My Feet. . <em>"Good morn or evening, friends. . . Here's your friendly announcer. . ."</em><br /><br />I skipped March's "album of the month" - I was just too busy to finish my exploration of Lyle Lovett's <em>I Love Everybody</em>, and ultimately was not that happy with it. However, rather than retreat a bit from this project and tackle something a little smaller, I went in the other direction and decided to write about Stevie Wonder's <em>Songs in the Key of Life</em> because 1) It is one of the best albums of the 70s, if not all time, and 2) it has been on serious heavy rotation for me lately. It <em>feels</em> like a springtime album to me, and I have been craving some springtime. However, I will only write about the first half of it for now, saving the second half for a latter date, because 1) it is a double album and 2) because I've been listening to the first half more than the second. It is important to keep in mind, that I am discussing the songs here as they are broken up on the CD set. On vinyl, there was an additional EP with 4 songs which were split up and put in pairs at the end of each disc.<br /><br /><img height="220" hspace="3" src="http://pics.livejournal.com/osito71/pic/00026wcr" width="220" align="left" vspace="3" /> The thing about listening to Stevie is that for the most part what you hear is what you get. There are rarely any subtexts or irony in his songs, but everything has that earnestness of soul music - even his metaphors are obvious and his talk of love is unapologetic. But as far as I am concerned that is what I am looking for when I put on Stevie Wonder, and as long you know how to avoid the real cheese (basically most of his stuff from the 80s and beyond), you'll be okay. <em>Songs in the Key of Life</em> may threaten cheese at times, but it is totally mitigated by the earnestness, the funky dynamic grooves and that warm analog production. The album is from 1976 and I think you can tell that by listening. The problem is that sometimes that works in its favor and other times it feels a little dated, both in sound choice and in particular lyrics.<br /><br /><lj-cut text="Track by Track. . .">"Love's In Need of Love" opens the double album. Those lovely opening "oohs" are something I find myself singing a lot in the shower, or just walking to the train on a lovely spring day. The opening line "Good morn or evening, friends" speaks to the medium of an album - the listener deciding when to put that vinyl on (Yes, I own this record in both CD and vinyl form) - taking the role of a radio announcer giving a warning over just very soft and solid electric piano and great subtle drumwork with cymbal flourishes and the soft snap of the snare doesn't even come in (along with the backing vocals) until the second time the chorus comes in. There is a real palpable sense of restraint in this song. As Zooey once said when I played him this album, "He sure likes to take his time," and this song is a perfect example, because after those two verses he just plays on a repetition of the chorus over and over, adding little vocal ad-libs while the backing vocals (Stevie overdubs) stretch out the sounds and reinforces that feeling that the song might explode at any moment into some epic paean to love and the need to value it - "Did you ever think that love would be in love?", but it never does. Instead, it tumbles back down to perfect softness, "Just give the world love."<br /><br />"Have a Talk with God" has a moderate groove that is accentuated with some awesome harmonica work. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that it was the mid-70s I would think it was sampled because of the way it plays with repetition of a phrase. The song is lyrically problematic for me. I mean, I cringe a little every time I hear the lyric, "Well, he's the only free psychiatrist that's known throughout the world / Solving the problems of all men, women, little boys and girls." Which problems is God solving exactly, Stevie? I think of violence, starvation, other forms of suffering and scoff - not to mention how at odds this message is with his more social progressive descriptive songs on the same album (like the following track, "Village Ghetto Land"). However, as someone who finds "talks with God" a helpful exercise, despite my skepticism and belief in a random and absurd universe, I appreciate the message. I can relate to it. The groove helps.<br /><br />"Village Ghetto Land" has a simple repetitive melody over a bed of synthed out strings sound that is some of what I was talking about when I said that sometimes this record <em>sounds</em> like it is from 1976. It is like Stevie got a new toy when he recorded this song and could not help but use it in a way that is a little overwhelming - baroque even - and the synthed strings gives that impression of the baroque as well. Lyrically, it is a descriptive song that gives us views of life in the ghetto - it particularly gives me feel of the urban deterioration of the 70s. "Broken glass is everywhere / It's a bloody scene / Killing plagues the citizens / Unless they own police." And then there is the conclusion that I feel is at odds with the afore-mentioned, "Have a Talk with God": "Now some folks say that we should be / Glad for what we have / Tell me would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land?"<br /><br />"Contusion" is a poorly thought out instrumental fusion piece that I guiltily admit I skip almost every time I listen to this album.<br /><br />"Sir Duke/I Wish" - These two songs are so well-known and so classic, I feel almost as if I don't need to write about them at all. They also go together in my mind, thus my listing them together. "Sir Duke" is one of those songs <em>about</em> music that I love. It is just so fresh and lively and sincere and speaks of music in a way I can deeply relate to - but more than anything it is the horns on this song that make it work, and the guttural encouragements that Stevie gives them, telling them to "Go!" The flourishes they give at the end of the lines and of course, the repetition of that melody on horn while the high-hat keeps time. . . You can't help but "feel it" just like the song says we do, "They can feel it all over!" - The bassline and plucky guitar of "I Wish" comes right out that last call to the horns to play that line again capped off with two hard staccato notes of ending/transition. (Though interestingly on the vinyl Side A ends here and Side B starts with "I Wish") It is the that electric piano groove that really carries this song. It is subtle, but holds aloft the wordy descriptive lyrics of unrepentant nostalgia - and that is exactly what it is, unrepentant. Singing of childhood, "I wish those days could come back once more / Why did those days ev-er have to go? / Cause I love them so." Again, to me this song is about good feelings and I don't like to undermine that too much by considering the fact that we do ourselves (and those that still suffer from it) an injustice when we sentimentalize poverty. So when Stevie sings of Christmas, "Even though we sometimes would not get a thing / We were happy with the joy the day would bring" I can't help but think that for a child suffering want, it might not be so easy to understand or appreciate that joy. Or on a more personal, less political level, I think that childhood, as wonderful as it can be, can also be a time of deep frustration and lack of choice. I think a lot of adults who express a desire to be young again forget how much of their lives were determined by others and institutions in those years, and how typically your resources are severely limited in terms of changing that. But whatever, it is still a great song, especially if you can forget the travesty that was Will Smith using it as the basis for the "Wild, Wild West" song for that awful movie. . . Stevie even agreed to be in video. . . Did I mention the movie was awful? I mean, giant robots in the old west sounds good until actually happens - I am all for remakes of mostly forgotten mash-ups of genre - but ugh! The highlight of the movie is the flash of Salma Hayek's butt you get in one scene, but not worth the price of admission even when played on cable.<br /><br />"Knocks Me Off My Feet" - I have been listening to this song obsessively lately, and if you don't already own <em>Songs in the Key of Life</em> then you need to get off your ass and go buy it, or if you are into the whole downloading thing like the kids are these days, keep your ass in the chair, open up a tab on your browser or go to iTunes and get the album! And if not the album then this song. (Or I guess you can just listen to it on You Tube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwSuPXMHhaE" target="_blank">here</a>). I am not going to say much about it except that I <em>feel</em> it lately. It is in some deep rotation for me - and despite its warning that its message may cause boredom, the repetition and earnestness work for me every time, especially when that syncopated high-hat comes in for the chorus near the end, to give it that underlying disco feel despite its soulful ballad origins, with the soft touches and the drum hits that parallel the melody that build to that beautiful chorus. Listen.<br /><br />"Pastime Paradise" - People recognize this song because Coolio used it as the basis for "Gangsta Paradise" for that awful Michelle Pfieffer movie, whatever, whatever it was called. . . I forget. I don't care. Or, perhaps you prefer Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" (the beef between Coolio and Weird Al is legendary! - the former getting pissed at the latter for parodying <em>his</em> song! Uh, Coolio? Let me play something for you. . .) Anyway, again the lyrics of this song seems at odds with both "I Wish" ("They've been wasting most their time / Glorifying days long gone behind") and "Have a Talk with God" ("They've been spending most their lives / Living in a future paradise / They've been looking in their minds / For the day that sorrow's gone from time / They keep telling of the day / When the savior of love will come to stay"). It is a simple song and the refrain repetition of words that end in "-tion" seems like perhaps it may not really mean anything, "Dissipation / Race relations / Consolation / Segregation / Dispensation / Isolation / Exploitation / Mutilation / Mutations / Miscreation / Confirmation...to the evils of the world." But again, the song works. Strong music and earnestness can overcome weak lyrics for me, and in this case the string quartet (is it a synth? - don't think they sounded that good in '76 - it is.) over the moderate latin groove on the conga and a <a href="http://www.musicofpuertorico.com/index.php/instruments/guiro/"><em>guiro</em></a> more than make up for it.<br /><br />"Summer Soft" is another song I have been feeling particularly lately because of April's inconsistent inclemency and unwillingness to get progressively warmer like I remember spring once doing, but maybe it never did that. . . Anyway, the song is the most poetic of the album, and while the metaphor of the unpredictability of the seasons/weather with love is pretty obvious it is still not as transparent as typical for Stevie's lyrics. The verses are as softly sung as what he is singing about, and the piano is quick, sprightly even, but with a strong build of rhythm accentuated by the rimshot snare until the gush of the refrain hits.<br /><blockquote>Summer soft ....<br />Wakes you up with a kiss to start the morning off<br />In the midst of herself playing Santa Claus<br />She brings gifts through her breeze<br /><br />Morning rain ....<br />Gently plays her rhythms on your window pane<br />Giving you no clue of when she plans to change<br />To bring rain or sunshine</blockquote><br /><br />The second set of verses gives winter a male gender and I love how there is a bit more forcefulness and menace with this seasonal personification: "Winter wind..../ Whispers to you that he wants to be your friend / But not waiting for your answer he begins / Forcing dangers way with his breeze," suggesting that masculine aggression we all know so well.<br /><br />The refrain is, as I said, a powerful gush, an accepting lament in tune with the inevitability of the changing of the seasons - the inevitability of lost love.<br /><br /><blockquote>And so you wait to see what he'll do<br />Is it sun or rain for you?<br />But it breaks your heart in two<br />Cause you've been fooled by April<br /><br />And he's gone<br />And he's gone<br />Winter's gone<br /><br />You find it's October<br />And she's gone<br />And she's gone<br />Summer's gone</blockquote><br /><br />The organ work in the is song is amazing, but like many of the songs on this album it is the drums that seem to carry it on - the rhythms are strong and driving with melodic flourishes that accentuate and syncopate. Amazing to think that Stevie played most of the instruments on all of these tracks. Wanna see/hear Stevie jam it out on the drums? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBA4vWQRBA0" target="_blank">Click Here</a>.<br /><br />"Ordinary Pain" is a wonderful dyad of a song - the first portion being a lament of lost love and the second being a reply by the object of that love that gives the listener new insight, or at least a different point of view, on the situation. The first part of the song is sung by Stevie, sweet and soulful carried by a crisp electric guitar rhythm and vibraphone (or is it a xylophone?) melodic accentuations that parallel every time the oft-repeated phrase "ordinary pain" is sung. The laconic delivery really works for the song, the sense of trying to hold back real anguish with reason - the realization that the feeling of loss from a ended romance is normal, "ordinary," and to think that it is more than ordinary, to privilege your feelings over those any other person might have felt is to appear more than a little foolish. And it is about appearances, because the authenticity of feeling is never in doubt to the person feeling it, to everyone else the authenticity is beside the point, displays of that kind of emotion are slightly distasteful to even the most sympathetic person.<br /><br /><blockquote>When you by chance<br />Go knock on her door<br />Walkin' away<br />you're<br />convinced that<br />it's much more<br />Than just an ordinary<br />pain in your heart<br />It's more than just<br />An ordinary pain in your heart<br /><br />Don't fool yourself<br />But tell no one else<br />That it's more than just<br />An ordinary pain<br />In your heart</blockquote><br /><br />The second portion of the song is sung by a woman (Shirley Brewer), and its sentiment is a lot harsher than the sad, slightly pathetic voice of the first part. Shirley's voice has a scolding tone emphasized by a chorus of women repeatedly hitting every syllable with staccato fury "or-DIN-ary pain / or-DIN-ary pain!" It becomes clear that the woman he sings of in the first part might have had reason to treat him so unkindly, "You're cryin' big crocodile tears / Don't match the ones I've cried for years / When I was home waiting for you / You were out somewhere doing the do / You know I'd really like to stay / But like you did I've got to play." The tempo of the music picks up and there is an off-eighths high-hat that gives it kind of pre-disco groove with a spacy guitar further back in the mix accompanied by an alto sax, and Stevie's electric piano keeps it altogether. Back when I used to DJ I used to sometimes play just the second half of this song.<br /><br />"Saturn" comes in right after "Ordinary Pain" with epic sounding synth sounds over piano chords meant to emulate the strains of royal horns, or perhaps God's heavenly band blowing their brass. I can imagine that it may sound tinny or cheesy to 21st century ears, but there is something about the smallness of the sound juxtaposed with what it is trying to convey that works for me still, as if the hope in the song is beyond the confines of Earth - and rightly so, because here Stevie is so thirsting for a better more just world that he imagines his people coming not from somewhere else on this planet, but from <em>Saturn</em> where things make more sense through compassion and wonder. The longing in this song hits me every time from the very first line, "Packing my bags / going away / to a place where the air is clean / on Saturn." However, the song is as much an accusation as it is a vision of hope, because there is a "you" addressed in its verses that can be interpreted broadly as those in power on Earth, though honestly I tend to think of the "you" as <em>white people</em> and people of color being the people from Saturn - like hey, maybe things are set up the way they are because we <em>are</em> from another planet after all -<br /><br /><blockquote>We have come here many times before<br />To find your strategy to peace is war<br />Killing helpless men, women and children<br />That don't even know what they are dying for<br />We can't trust you when you take a stand<br />With a gun and Bible in your hand,<br />With a cold expression on your face<br />Saying give us what we want or we'll destroy<br /></blockquote><br /><br />But the chorus is a shout out to the vision of Saturn's wonder, "Going back to Saturn where the rings all glow / Rainbow moonbeams and orange snow / On Saturn / People live to be two hundred and five / Going back to Saturn where the people smile / Don't need cars cause we've learn to fly / On Saturn / Just to live to us is our natural high." Again, Stevie's lyrics are not his strength necessarily, it is the power of his voice, the emotion, the <em>earnestness</em> of soul that elevates his work. I love this song.<br /><br />"Ebony Eyes" - This song begins with a recording of a group of girls playing double-dutch, singing one of those songs that end with a reciting of the alphabet, with the letter where the jumper messes up indicating who their crush, or true love or whatever might be. The scene ends with the girls screeching at the jumper, "Paul! Oh Paul!" and then the piano that carries the song comes in. It is beautiful and bouncy love song that references the "Black is Beautiful" movement, "She's a Miss Beautiful Supreme / A girl that other wish that they could be / If there's seven wonders of the world / Then I know she's gotta be number one / She's a girl that can't be beat / Born and raised on ghetto streets / She's a devastating beauty / A pretty girl with ebony eyes." It is a positive and uplifting way to end the first part of the album, closing on a soft roll of abrupt drums.<br /><br />The second part of the record opens with "Isn't She Lovely" and while I said I was only doing the songs on Disc One here, I figured I would mention a little about some of them as who know if and when I'll ever get to a closer overview of it. Anyway, "Isn't She Lovely" is a sweet song to his daughter Aisha, but unfortunately it is made overlong by the addition of a recording of her in the bath. I guess there must be a radio edit, and sometimes I wish I could have the option of that one when I put the record on. I mean, I respect the love and joy that led Stevie to write the song and to include her baby-voice and cooing parental tones to the end of it - but it gets to be a little much. "Black Man" is a song to celebrate 1976, the Bicentennial. There are aspects to this song I really love, despite its problematic use of terms like "yellow man" to speak of Asians, or the fact that despite the little swell of pride I am meant to feel when he sings "I know the birthday of a nation / is a time when a country celebrates / but when your hand touches your heart / Remember we all played a part / in America to help that banner wave" I know that what we were all helping to was steal land from the people already here and that a lot of that building was done on the backs of the enslaved. "If It's Magic" is just voice and harp and a heartbreaking song that speaks to the inevitability of love lost. "If it's pleasing / then why can't it be never-leaving?"<br /><br />"As" is one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs of all time. The last time I was convinced of the existence of God was when he performed this song at the end of a ceremony in his honor on BET I managed to catch six or seven years ago. There was a halo of divine light emanating from him and I thought I saw God peek his out from behind Stevie and wink at me. Finally, "All-Day Sucker" reminds me of "Ordinary Pain," or at least I used to get them confused. "I'm an all day sucker / Coming to give something to get nothin' / I'm an all day sucker / Coming to give something but to get none of your love." It has great groove and an unlikely wild electric guitar part in the middle of the mix with the repetition of a distorted singing of "all day sucker for your love / all day sucker cup for your love."<br /><br />Like I said at the beginning "Songs in the Key of Life" feels like a spring/summertime album for me (in a long list of summer/spring albums I love to listen to - like XTC's <em>Skylarking</em> and a lot of hip-hop records) and I am sure I will listen to it in part and in full dozens, if not scores, of more times between now and September. I think you should, too.</LJ-CUT>everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-23639380553191055842009-02-27T11:47:00.005-05:002009-02-27T12:04:27.838-05:00Me Upon My Pony On My BoatJust one song today, though I may be doing a whole album by this artist in March as my "album of the month."<br /><br />Lyle Lovett is one of my favorite songwriters. It is about his quirky way of expressing the simple and his way of exploring that area where country, blues and gospel intersect and overlap. It the discovery of his music that gave me what I needed to fearlessly explore country for what there was to appeal to me there, and eschew the final shackles of genre that were holding me back from appreciating music in a completely free way.<br /><br />"If I Had a Boat" (off of <em>Pontiac</em> (1988)) is a song of the bitterness of lost love though it may not seem that way from a superficial examination of its lyrics. Musically it is a simple song, a finger-picked progression high-up on the fretboard with a walking bass-line that does not change really for the refrain or verses - just reinforcing the last line of each that delivers the little punch or point of the song/verse with a pleasing resolution of the progression. There is a dobro in there and some simple drumming as well to develop the ambience of the song.<br /><br />It opens with the refrain as if the song had already started, had been being sung perpetually. <blockquote>(and) If I had a boat<br />I'd go out on the ocean<br />And if I had a pony<br />I'd ride him on my boat<br />And we could all together<br />Go out on the ocean<br />Me upon my pony on my boat</blockquote>It is silly, and I think it was meant to be - this image of a man riding a horse on a boat. I imagine not too big a boat, actually - though I guess there is nothing in the song to say one way or another. I always imagine a boat just big enough for a horse with a man on it, though I guess for it to be able to "go out on the ocean" we'd hope it'd be a boat of sufficient size to deal with those oceanic swells - but I am being too literal in my imaginings. It is beside the point. The point is the silliness, a man on a pony on a boat. What does this even mean? Perhaps the verses can shed light on it for us.<br /><blockquote>If I were Roy Rogers<br />I'd sure enough be single<br />I couldn't bring myself to marrying old Dale<br />It'd just be me and Trigger</blockquote><br />Here is where we get to understand what this song is about. The lyrics suggest a retreat from a(n even legendary) romantic relationship, preferring instead the steady companionship of a horse. (Note that Roy Rogers had Trigger stuffed when he died). The desire for the boat and the ability to escape across the ocean that it represents and the companionship of the pony is a retreat from more complex adult desires. There is something child-like about wishing for a boat and pony, and in their absurd combination. It sounds like something a kid would say, and the rejecting Dale Evans underscores that infantilism - an urge to return to sexual latency - in other words, "Girls? Yuck!" The cowboy allusions in the song also have the same effect. They are the superheroes of the mythical West.<br /><br />The cowboy references continue in the second verse where the replacement figure for Dale becomes Tonto. . . Kind of. . . Actually, the allusion gets kind of mixed up and turned around and it is less clear who the singer is meaning to associate himself with. He does not say "The Lone Ranger," but he says that the "Mystery masked-man was smart / He got himself a Tonto." Here it seems that "a Tonto" is like Trigger for Dale in the first verse, a replacement for a woman (which has that homoerotic undertone that I like). Yet, by verse's end, it seems to have switched, because "Tonto he was smarter / And one day said kemo sabe / Kiss my ass I bought a boat / I'm going out to sea." Again, a relationship is dissolved in favor of escape and retreat, out of bitterness for doing "the dirty work for free." The replacement figure in this lyrics becomes the one who needs to escape the relationship. The phrase "dirty work" is also pregnant with meaning, referring literally to whatever violence and violations the Lone Ranger and Tonto committed in their adventures, but I am convinced there is a sexual reference there as well. "Dirty work for free" can totally refer to sex (again with that homoerotic undertone between the Lone Ranger and his sidekick) and the resentment stemming from lack of recognition and being a sideline character - that is, being taken for granted.<br /><br />The third verse is the hardest to parse, I think. The reference to being "like lightning" is easy enough to figure out, ephemeral, powerful, quick, uncatchable. The reference to not needing sneakers is about how as lightning he could "come and go wherever [he] would please" not having to slip or sneak off, but could be free of the obligations of relationships, coming and going boldly, without worry or regret. Again, the primary desire being expressed here is to escape the potential complexity and loss of adult relationships, preferring the more base emotion of fear ("And I'd scare 'em by the shade tree / And I'd scare 'em by the light pole") as means of establishing control of the situation. "But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea" he sings, reinforcing that control, the safety and separation of being on his pony on his boat - fulfilling a childish desire.<br /><br />I love this song. Simple and quirky in the way that I love many of Lyle Lovett's songs, but still obfuscating what might be an unhealthy desire, but an understandable one nonetheless - a lament for something simple and pleasurable and reliable, but ultimately unattainable and (for me at least) too isolated and insulated from the pleasures of adult relationships.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/B-_W18CWypE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B-_W18CWypE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />As for the video (which is equally simple), I love the disruption of the "video illusion" in certain scenes where Lovett's lip-synching is ruined by his laughing. I also love the reminder of what his hair used to look like. I remember a time when his hair was what people most mentioned about him (well, that and his marriage to Julia Roberts).everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-3001626530746997652009-02-26T11:11:00.001-05:002009-02-26T11:11:44.648-05:00Nothing But Blue Skies. . .<strong>I love them sweet blues.</strong><br /><br />I think the blues get a bum rap because they are associated only with sadness, with loss commonly reinforced by a repetitive 12-bar structure and the often equally repetitive call-and-response of the lyrics, or the four-line lyric structure where the first line is repeated three times and then resolved with the rhyming third line and that repetition can seem morose, like a form of wallowing in grief - But it is in that repetition that the subtly and beauty of the form - the joyousness of it - emerges.<br /><br />There is joy in the blues. The suggestion of it resides deep inside its lament. Sure, sometimes it is more obvious than other, sometimes it can be noted in the humor of the blues, the hyperbole of sadness that bursts grief and blooms in the form of a smile or the spontaneous hiccup of laughter. (And sometimes the blues becomes a joke, which is okay in small doses, I guess - but too often the simplicity of its structure allows for severely unfunny untalented people to drive it into the ground. It is okay to makes the blues into a joke, but you have to respect it, too - whatever respecting it means). But leaving that aside, there is still joy in the blues. Every feeling has within it the suggestion and reminder of its opposite, and everything we grasp has the potential to be lost - so when we express that loss there is an implicit expression of what it was we had or want again. In a way to sing of loss, of grief, of hurt is to celebrate the feelings whose loss gives them meaning - give them a horizon of significance to be measured against. <br /><br />I cannot listen to the blues without feeling that, and even longing for something you have never had - might never, probably will never have - is <em>something</em> that total lack is not - it is something that allows for song to emerge. Music makes even sadness beautiful. <br /><br />I love them sweet blues.<br /><br />The <em>glissando</em> of blues singing drips with that sweetness, and the cadence of the flattened third, or fifth or seventh brings delicious tension that is resolved with the turn-around from that 12th bar back to the first (though don't let me fool you into thinking that all blues are 12-bar blues, it is just the most common, the most familiar to most people - but blues in a minor key, for example, often is built around 16-bar progressions).<br /><br />And I love that shuffling rhythm of blues, that feeling like you can just keep walking, like the rain doesn't touch you (it ain't called a walking bassline for nothing).<br /><br />The blues make me hopeful. They make me say, "This is what life <em>is</em>" and enjoy it - and while that joy may be problematic politically (didn't think I could get through a post here without using that phrase, did you?) it is no less joyous, wonderful, beautiful in the feeling it.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-2260829582491968402009-02-10T16:12:00.006-05:002011-12-26T13:28:36.014-05:005 Songs I'm FeelingHere are 5 songs I been really feeling lately:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XmxijQfMow"><strong>"Darling Nikki"</strong></a> (off of <em>Purple Rain</em>) is just such a great song. There is always a lot of emphasis on Prince's lyrics on this song, and rightly so. I mean, there are countless people of my generation that had whatever they were doing arrested at age 11, 12, 13, 14 by hearing "I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating to a magazine." And his groans and screams, the desperation in his voice and the unintelligible sections ("Nikki's love willakickayourbehind / Oh just show ya no mercy!") all make the song work and conveys everything the lyrics only suggest, but listening to the song lately I am struck by what the Revolution are doing in the background. They are riding this almost mechanistic self-arresting orgiastic groove. The drums are so fragmented throughout the song, just occasionally falling into an almost tic-toc two-feel, before stuttering on the cymbals. Really, it is Wendy and Lisa's guitar and keyboard work that carries the song, especially Wendy's little flair that serve to ornament Prince's singing. Then again, I am attributing this stuff to the band, but according to <em>Purple Rain's</em> liner notes, Prince played all the instruments on the recording.<br /><br />It is really the stops that make this song work, the sexual tension they emulate, until the keyboards hit that hard coda over and over, like a relieving rush. The backwards singing at the end of the song over the sound rain is the calm of post-orgasm. The backwards recording is a play on the fears of satanic messages recorded backwards on rock records, except true to Prince's occasionally creepy Christianity, played forwards it says: "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon. Coming, coming soon." <br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfUv6r3iVOw"><strong>"Love Dog"</strong></a> is off of TV on the Radio's <em>Dear Science</em> which I have been listening to with an obsession I have not had for a record since Radiohead's <em>In Rainbows</em> came out. More than any other song on the record (so far) "Love Dog" seems to hit it right both lyrically and musically, from the perfect "Ooooh ooh ooohs" to open the song, to the tight drum part, perfectly and crisply recorded. And the mellow electric piano sound that buoys the prayer-like delivery of the lyrics. The straining backing harmony that sometimes comes in also helps to convey the plaintive sadness of the song's subject. The whole song has a very subtle build as more and more elements join it, soft horns - filling out the sound, eventually joined by strings and whirring electronic sounds. <br /><br />At one point they sing:<br /><blockquote><br />Nameless you above me<br />Come lay me low and love me<br />This lonely little love dog<br />That no one knows the name of<br /><br />Curse me out in free verse<br />Wrap me up and reverse this<br />Patience is a virtue<br />Until it's silence burns you</blockquote><br />. . . and it speaks to me in a way I cannot quite articulate.<br /><br />Speaking of <em>In Rainbows</em>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEiY-wDdHK0&eurl=http://www.last.fm/music/Radiohead/+videos/+1-LEiY-wDdHK0&feature=player_embedded"><strong>"Nude"</strong></a> is a haunting song that never quite escapes me. "Haunting" is the perfect word, because the "ooohs" here do sound like ghost whispers, and there is a sense of disorientation from what sound like some kind backwards effect on the keyboard, maybe even the snare hits might be brushed with the effect. The bass is so stripped down and bouncing along perfect and dub-like when it comes in to carry Thome York's strained voice. "Don't get any / big ideas / they're not / gonna happen," he sings, holding back the syllables to create tension and build up the anticipation. All there is for that first verse is the bass and voice with some ghostly keyboard way back in the mix until a guitar comes in to echo the bass notes with some soft chords. "Nude" seems to capture the ineffiability of the ephemeral perfectly, "Now that you've found it it's gone / Now that you feel it you don't." All the musical elements come together perfectly with a subtle build similar to that I described in "Love Dog" - and that final accusatory "You'll go to hell / for what your / dirty mind / is thinking" the last syllable drawn out back to the "ooohs" that die down and then rise back up to something almost heavenly - a soul fleeing its mortal vestments and ascending in contrast to the sad pronouncement of the final lyrics.<br /><br />I think the reason this song started hitting the nail on the head for me was because at the time that I started listening to the record I was going on a lot of first dates that were serving more to disappoint me than to give me hope of meeting someone that could burst my ambivalence.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0JOOEnRopM"><strong>"For You"</strong></a> is off of <em>Greetings from Asbury Park</em>, a record I have been listening to with some obsession (along with other early Springsteen) since the Super Bowl. I am so easily influenced when it comes to music getting into my heavy rotation - all it takes is one listen to a particular song or artist in a particular setting and something clicks in my mind and I won't be satisfied until I have gone back to plumbing their discography. "For You" is much more of a straight-up rock song, and as such I feel like I have little to say about its instrumentation. It just starts with the snap of drums and the little piano rhythm and the acoustinc strumming that accompanies Bruce's voice. Really, this song is all about Springsteen's crammed lyrics and his delivery. . . I remember the first time I heard this song it was the mid-90s, when I was standing out front of a bodega on Flatbush avenue waiting for the bassist of my band to come out with beer, and Zooey leaned over and began to sing it into my ear. <br /><br />To me the song speaks of the impossibility of "saving" someone no matter how you might desire it - and how it martyrs the savior as they absorb the abuse of it "like some soldier undaunted." The strongest part of the song is the refrain which is savored by the fact that it is only sung twice, as after the second verse instead of returning to it the song builds out the anticipation as if it were to come and instead has a brief acoustic guitar break and then a bridge with descending chords. Bruce sings then screams, "And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds / Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god?" But what I was talking about was the refrain that is arrived at by means of the music moving to feel as if the band were trying to put on the brakes but somehow the momentum will not be restrained, until the drums tap and the Boss sings, "I came for you, for you, I came for you, / but you did not need my urgency / I came for you, for you, I came for you, / but your life was one long emergency / and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free." I am not even sure what "my electric surges free" is supposed to mean. The "cloud line urges me" makes sense because of that urge to rescue, to cast aside the storm clouds of someone else's life.<br /><br />There may also be a suggestion here that the "you" in the song doesn't want to be saved, "you did not need my urgency," which makes sense when your life is one long emergency, since the very idea of what an emergency is loses its meaning when stretched out indefinitely as timeliness is part and parcel of its definition. A little bit of organ ends the song. . . Ultimately, it is the very unneeded urgency of how the song is delivered that makes it work and that gives the sense that perhaps the speaker is the one who feeling an urgent desire to be saved. I mean, it is the "you" in the song that is compared to Superman: "Didn't you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive / able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?" I don't know. I just <em>feel</em> it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTlAwcsRZD0"><strong>"Sometimes I Forget,"</strong></a> by Loudon Wainwright III (of off <em>History</em>) is another song that is more about the feeling and lyrics than any particular musical achievement. Written for his father that passed, whenever this song comes on I cannot help but think of both my nephew and <em>mi abuela</em> who died in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The song is just Loudon singing accompanied by nothing but his guitar, and explaining how a person's absence is most strongly felt in those moments when we forget that the person is "gone and not coming back."<br /><br /><blockquote>It's as if all you've done is go out of town<br />You'll be back soon, that's just how it looks<br />But your suitcase is empty, it's right here in the hall<br />That's not even the strangest thing<br />Why would you leave your wallet behind?<br />Your glasses, your wristwatch and ring?</blockquote>The song is just sparse and sad and raw - and when I hear, "And there was something I wanted to tell you so bad / Something I knew that you'd want to know" I am overwhelmed by the thought of all things I would have liked to tell my nephew and never got a chance to. And when I hear "Momentos, memories, tell me what good are they?" I think of all the things <em>mi abuela</em> left behind and the process of going through to clear out what wasn't needed, what could be donated, what could be thrown away and what we would each keep to remember her by. And while the song ends with a hopeful note, "Sometimes I forget that you've gone / Sometimes it feels like you're right here / Right now it feels like you're right here," ultimately, the feeling the song leaves me with is irrecoverable loss.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-57666473857498128842009-02-09T14:03:00.001-05:002009-02-10T14:00:55.838-05:00what was yours is everyone’s from now onWelcome to the Future.<br /><br />I have been writing with some irregularity about music on my personal blog for some years now, and since I am trying to do it more regularly, I figured I would start a blog that was for nothing but these posts about music - mostly "classic" albums I will always love and particular songs I am particularly feeling at particular times. When I say I am "feeling" a song, I just mean something about its sound and/or lyrical content is resonating with my general mood, and since I am obsessed with articulating why I like the things I like (and don't like the things I don't like) usually my writing about music emerges from the strength of this "feeling."<br /><br /> I wanted to date this entry way into the future (my 40th birthday, so I guess not <em>that</em> far - but this explains my opening line here, "Welcome to the future".) so it would always be the first one (at least until that date when maybe I will set it ahead to my 45th birthday), but I cannot figure out how to do that and have it appear <em>before </em>that date. . . So, when I transfer over some of my music posts from my older blog I am going to try to backdate them - so some of the dates are going to range back four or five years - try not to get confused.<br /><br />Recently, I began a little project where I try to write about one of my favorite albums each month. So far, I have January (Prince's 1999) and February (The Police's Regatta de Blanc) 2009, and I will definitely be transferring those over and the rest of them will go on here from now on. I have not decided if I will cross-post, but it is likely.<br /><br />The name for this blog comes the Wilco song "What Light" from <em>Sky Blue Sky</em>, in which Jeff Tweedy sings, "And if the whole world’s singing your songs / And all of your paintings have been hung / Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on." This captures my feelings perfectly on all art forms - once it is created and put out there it doesn't belong to the artist anymore and they really have nothing to do with it. I am also a strong believer in music being free, so while I myself have not illegally downloaded music in many years, it is only because the sound quality of those Mp3s do not satisfy me and my obsessive need to collect requires album art (even if it is a lost art) and liner notes. I need to own the physical object. I don't trust computers to hold onto that info indefinitely. It has nothing to do with the dubious (im)morality of doing so.<br /><br />Comments and questions are welcome.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-68904635467753122942009-02-09T12:04:00.006-05:002009-02-09T16:52:47.818-05:00Just a Castaway. . .<img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/osito71/pic/00020pb4" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right" width="125" height="125"> I started writing this month's essay on one of my favorite albums - Ben Folds Five's <em>Whatever and Ever Amen</em>, but the close-listening just confirmed what I had been considering for a while, which is that the record does not do it for me the way it once did. Perhaps I have "outgrown it," or perhaps I am just not in that same bitter recently broken up moving through a weird relationship mode like I was when I first became enamoured of it. And while I wrote more than half of it and at first I was going to just muddle through and finish examining it, this morning I put <em>Regatta de Blanc</em> by The Police on my iPod and it struck me that <em>this</em> is a classic album that my appreciation for has deepened in the 20+ years I have been listening to it. <em>This</em> was the album I should write about.<br /><br />I started listening to this record at the end of my freshman year in high school, <lj-cut text="Read more. . . .">so 1986, seven years after it had been released. My Police obsession had penetrated my bubble of hip-hop, soul and R&B that I lived in then when <em>Synchronicity</em> came out while I was in 7th grade, but it would not be for a couple of years before I began to explore the rest of their records. For a good part of my high school years if you asked me what my favorite bands were I would have replied, "The Police, Prince and Pink Floyd," and true to teen-aged obsession with obscure meaning, I used to try to figure out what it was about the letter 'P' that made me like the bands - or maybe I was just high. . .<br /><br />When I first started listening to the Police it was probably the lyrics and the reggae feel that drew me in ("Regatta de Blanc" is supposedly some bastardized French for "White Reggae"), but like any good band as time went on different aspects of the music appealed to me. For a long time it was (and to some degree still is) Steward Copeland's phenomenal drumming, but more recently I have come to feel that Andy Summers' guitar-playing is underrated and is just as phenomenal. I mean, it is so understated and perfect as to blend in and be almost forgotten, but when you train your ear to break the parts up and really listen you can hear both the intricacy of the progressions and the deceiving simplicity of the rhythms he plays. He is not a shreddy lead-guitar kind of guitar player (though he can do that), but rather his rhythmic flares keeps things moving over Sting's journeyman basslines and Stewart's expressive drumming.<br /><br />The opening track is an example of a song that I might have just heard too many times in my life to still have the same effect on me. "Message in a Bottle" may just forever be one of those teenage songs to me, expressing the collective alienation I was beginning to sense at that age and that is so easy to wallow in at 15 or 16. If anything, it is definitely one of the most straightforward of their songs with the pounding snare and the driving descending progression, but Copeland's fills and his ever-excellent cymbal work fills it out nicely. Of course, I shouldn't discount Sting's ability to carry the song vocally. Sometimes I forget what he was once capable because of the intervening years of his mostly stinky solo records (with some exceptional tracks).<br /><br />While the title track is nothing impressive lyrically with some fake "world music" nonsense words and sounds, the instruments themselves are excellent from Copeland's great rim-taps to Summers' airy slow appregiating of chords to open the song and just showing how much you can do with nothing but rhythm (even if the bass parts are rather simple and repetitive). "It's Alright For You" might be the weakest track on the record (perhaps second weakest depending on how you feel about "On Any Other Day") with its psuedo-punk approach and rapid-fire lyrics. It just has no depth and musically is not all that interesting - I guess the little "turn around" riff between the verse on the guitar is vaguely interesting, but I can't help but wonder what this song is really about. Hmm, take it back about being completely muscially uninteresting, I guess the guitar break a little more than halfway through the song shows some interesting effects on the guitar making it sound like two different instruments.<br /><br />"Bring On the Night" would be my favorite song on the record if it weren't for the first song on the second side. I just love how it builds with the high-hat hits and the nearly helicopterish guitar that transforms into one of the most interesting chord progressions in any of their songs, almost behind the beat and finger-picked I can spend 4+ minutes of the track doing nothing but listening to that part alone, but when the chorus comes, the bass is that simple boucey feel that carries you through and perfectly expresses the relief of the night's arrival, aided by the reggae strumming that comes on the guitar. Copeland plays the highhat almost throughout and again, Sting's voice is perfect here, perfectly expressing both the desire and relief. According to wikipedia, the song is supposed to be about the execution of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore">Gary Gilmore</a>, but I never knew that until recently, and I don't know the source for that information. Seems irrelevant. "Deathwish" has no chorus. Just three verses sung amid what is mostly an instrumental. In fact, it is easy for me to forget there are lyrics at all. Like a lot of these songs it has a driving rhythm that is accented nicely by Andy Summers' guitar (great mix of struming, arrpegiating and use of echo). I like the lyrics.<br /><br /><blockquote>Deathwish in the fading light<br />Headlight pointing through the night<br />Never thought I’d see the day<br />Playing with my life this way<br /><br />Gotta keep my foot right down<br />If I had wings I’d leave the ground<br />Buning in the outside lane<br />People think that I’m insane<br /><br />The day I take a bend too fast<br />Judgement that could be my last<br />I’ll be wiped right off the slate<br />Don’t wait up ’cause I’ll be late</blockquote><br />Side Two begins with what is probably my favorite song by the Police, "Walking on the Moon." From the instantly recognizable bassline to the echoing guitar chords and jaunty reggae feel that imply some loss of gravity, the song's simplicity is its strength. Again, this song displays Stewart Copeland's excellent highhat work, but it is the feeling it more than adequately describes that is the best part of it. Or perhaps it is just me, the silly romantic that I can be - but the sensation: "Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Your feet they hardly touch the ground. . ." I know it so well, and I love it. It is a moment divorced from the future, just like you'd feel divorced from gravity making giant steps across the moonscape. The song ends with more of Copeland's great cymbal-work and the echoing "Keep it up" suggests not only a common call out in ska and reggae, but also the weightlessness itself. The song is just as close to perfect as you can get, if you ask me.<br /><br />"On Any Other Day" was written by Stewart Copeland and he does most of the singing on it. It starts with him saying "The other ones are complete bullshit. . " which suggests not only that his other offerings are worse, but that they think this track is bullshit as well to some degree - and I cannot disagree. It just has a jokey sophmoric feel that just doesn't sit well with me and doesn't age well. I guess the horrible things listed in the song are happening on the protagonist's birthday. . . But really, I don't care. It isn't even very interesting musically and ultimately not all that funny.<br /><br />"The Bed's Too Big Without You" on the other hand is another of my favorites off this album. A kind of reggae ballad that puts the guitar, bass and drum pieces together beautifully. The song fades in from the left channel and then comes in stereo (I have heard a mono version), and has the perfect tempo for Sting's languid lyrics.<br /><br />"Contact" is a weird song with a droning bassline and obscure lyrics, though I like the chorus. "Have we got contact, you and me? Have we got touchtone? Can we be?" It not a very long song, and neither is the song that follows it that at one time I would have probably said was my favorite on the album, "Does Everyone Stare?" This song is unique in that it starts with piano and Stewart Copeland singing a kind of muffled lead that echoes the verses to come until the song really starts up and Sting takes over the lead vocals - just before he does there is a sample(? - can I call it a sample?) of a man's operatic voice further back in the mix, not sure what is up with that, but it works. Again, this is a song that I think my teenaged self related to because of the awkwardness it conveys (reinforced by the purposefully slightly off-time kind of marching drum that goes along with the the trotting piano chords). "I change my clothes ten times before I take you on a date / I get the heebie-jeebies and my panic makes me late / I break into a cold sweat reaching for the phone / I let it ring twice before / I chicken out and decide you're not at home." Of course, the very idea of staring at a woman reinforces the awkward creepiness of it.<br /><br />The closing track is "The Other Way of Stopping" is a fast-paced frenetic song with some amazing drumming.</lj-cut><br /><br />Overall, I find <em>Regatta de Blanc</em> to be the Police's best album, though I am leaving aside the problematic aspect of cultural appropriation that come along with the idea of "white reggae," mainstreaming it beyond even the broader popularity that Bob Marley gave it. Reading this over I also find that my enthusiasm for the record is lacking compared to what I wrote about <em>1999</em> last month. I think that might because of my recent discovery of TV on the Radio's <em>Dear Science</em>, and right now everything I am feeling about it is what <em>Regatta de Blanc</em> is not. It fills that bottom middle in a way that the sparseness of the Police's tunes do not, and while I love that sparseness, the negative aural space that it creates, right now I am appreciating that fullness contrasted with the falsetto voices and the frequent handclaps. I have also been kind of obsessively listening to some early Springsteen records and they too have a "full" sound laid over with that cramped lyricality with endless eternal rhyme that Bruce was into back then. I may have to write about <em>Greetings from Asbury Park</em> next month, that is, if I am not still so into <em>Dear Science</em> that I just have to write about it.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-81033200041093211162009-01-29T15:10:00.003-05:002009-02-09T15:36:10.104-05:00Read Instructions Before AssemblingOne of my favorite things in music are meta-instructions to the band in a song or descriptions of what the band is doing or about to do. . . Especially when it is on a studio recording and thus has to be a very self-conscious (and unnecessary) thing - as compared to a recording of a live performance where it might actually be serving to instruct/direct the band. I am talking about when the singer/bandleader just announces "bridge!" and the band breaks to the bridge (like James Brown might). Prince does this a lot (like on "Mountains" when he says, "Guitars and drums on the one," or "Superfunkycalifragisexy" when he says, "In seven measures I want somebody to scream," and then someone does. . . him), but I have written a lot about Prince lately so I won't focus on him.<br /><br />Another common example is a lot of the older salsa I listen to (my taste in salsas and rhumbas ends in the 70s somewhere, basically the music my mom exposed me to growing up). There are a lot of call outs to particular instrumentalists in the recordings, giving them instructions or announcing their solos. This might be jazz influencing the music.<br /><br />On Taj Mahal's song (or his version of it anyway) "Cluck Old Hen" he says, "And this is what the cluckin' sound like on the banjo. . ." And then he plays it. The whole song has the banjo sounding like a bunch of clucking chickens.<br /><br />This reminds me that sometimes these instructions or explanations are for the audience, as he says later "Now listen to them hens!"<br /><br />Dance songs of course are the most common example of instructions for the listeners, often describing the dance that goes along with the song. But still, that is not quite what I meant when I started writing this. Live recordings are also a very common example of this, with the band imploring the crowd to clap or sing along or to cheer out or scream. I remember many years ago a friend of mine admitting that he felt a little embarrassed when he heard recordings of crowds acting that way, but I scoffed. "They are at a concert. They are just really into it. . ." I guess I am empathetic since I can get that into it just listening to my ipod waiting for the train to go home from work. Once at a Flaming Lips show, Wayne Coyne implored us to pump our fists as they played "The Gash," saying "Yeah, I know it's cheesy, and you feel like just some follower - but that is what we come to concerts for. Forget yourself! Play along!" I appreciated that moment of awareness of audience participation and his jab at the too-school-for-school alt-rockers who would never be caught dead pumping their fists in time to the music along with everyone else.<br /><br />I guess, <em>the</em> most common example of instructions or guides in a song is just counting off to begin a song, "1. . 2. . 3. . 4. ." Or I guess sometimes in the middle when there is about to be a change or some new instrumentation is about to come in.<br /><br />Boogie Down Productions' song "Nervous" off of <em>By All Means Necessary</em> is a particular cool example. Hip-hop is full of self-reflective instructions/descriptions, but on this particular track KRS-ONE actually explains the things he is doing "on the 48-track board" while he doing it. For example, "There's two ways to do this, you see what I'm sayin? / If you feel the board, you feel around / We got tracks one to track 48 / We find track seven, and break it down!" And of course, the beat breaks down at the moment. . . This is an example of a song I used to not like and would skip, but over the years of listening to album that meta aspect began to appeal to me.<br /><br />Another variation is when little snippets of instruction or conversation are kept on a cut and becomes just part of how you think of the song. For example, the version of "Revolution" on <em>The Beatles</em> (aka "The White Album") has a little flub at the beginning and Paul McCartney saying "Take two" with John's response "Okay!" And then there is the infamous "I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!" at the end of "Helter Skelter," a song that proves the Beatles could rock when they wanted to - though I guess there is plenty of evidence of that in their earlier stuff that is more influenced by early American rock n'roll music. . . But anyway, that lamentation is more of a tangential outburst referring to the playing/recording of the song, rather than the song itself or some detail about how it is played. Who knows how many takes it took? Those blisters probably really hurt! One of the things I liked about the Beatles Anthologies that came out in the 90s were the alternate takes with the flubs and mess ups which included a lot of those tidbits - like Paul chuckling through to the end of a fucked up version of "Rocky Racoon." ("Sminking of gin")<br /><br />So, now I am giving you instructions for listening to music, listen for these instructions and try to decide what they add to the song, or perhaps you think they diminish the recording in some cases? What does it acommplish to make the seams of a song transparent?everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-3181010849654929162009-01-16T15:22:00.001-05:002009-02-09T16:29:00.646-05:00I Only Want You To Have Some Fun. . .<img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/osito71/pic/0001z7c7" hspace="4" vspace="4" align="right"> 1999. "Don't worry. I won't hurt you. I only want you to have some fun. . ."<br /><br />So opens an underrated classic, underscoring the sense of menace that is so often present in Prince's music, but that can be easily overlooked. Even if you don't want to characterize it as menace, there was an underlying tone in those early Prince records of the forbidden, of the taboo - like you are saying or doing something that might get you hurt - and that is appealing to me.<br /><br /><lj-cut text="Read the Rest"><br />It must have always been appealing, because <a href="http://everyonesfromnowon.blogspot.com/2009/02/dig-if-you-will-picture.html">as I wrote once before</a>, I first heard "1999" when I was about 11 years old over the Christmas break, and I think it is for that reason I always associate it with winter and the new year. I guess the title track is playing on millennial fear, even if it was 18 years before the threat of Y2K appeared to make people stress out about apparently nothing.<br /><br />(Note that throughout this essay when I refer to "1999" (in quotes) I mean the song by that name, and when I use <em>1999</em> (in italics) I mean the album as a whole).<br /><br /><em>1999</em> is a different kind of record and a culmination of some of the new-wavey keyboard and drum machine stuff Prince had been experimenting with on <em>Dirty Mind</em> and <em>Controversy</em>, and while <em>Purple Rain</em> (which followed <em>1999</em>) still has some of that keyboard-y stuff, the live drums and guitar rock gives it a totally different feel. There is an interesting contradiction in this collection of songs because while he certainly has a pop sensibility to his use of these electronic elements (in some cases riffing off Kraftwerk and in others pre-figuring Timbaland) and there some hooky-ass hooktidity hooks ("Delirious," "Little Red Corvette"), at the same time the songs are long - while "Delirious" clocks in at exactly four minutes, most of the songs are six or more minutes long with "Automatic" passing the nine-minute mark. The thing is that these were also dance songs, so that explains the length - but Prince has always been an artist that is unafraid to be self-indulgent (with varying levels of success) - so he is willing to spend two minutes of a song softly cooing over the drumbeat, or just groaning and moaning and making those Prince sounds that he manages to make. The dance music aspect also explains the melange of styles, because popular dance music often alludes to and plays with different styles and makes allusions to fragments of melody of other songs. So "Delirious" swings a bit, and both "Little Red Corvette" and "Let's Pretend We're Married" have a blues-rock base - and live versions of these songs I have heard sometimes emphasize these influences. In fact, despite the heavy synths throughout the record, almost all of it (save perhaps on "Automatic" and "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" could easily be arranged for horns, and most of the live versions I have heard of these songs do exactly that.<br /><br />The title track evokes a common Prince theme, the idea that the world is in bad shape and his only reaction to it is to experience as much pleasure as possible before he goes on to the next life. "War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight / So if I gotta die I'm gonna listen to my body tonight". Simultaneously, however, it does seem to ask questions from a particular (perhaps pacifist) political point of view. I mean, when the song closes "Mommy? Why does everybody have a bomb?" with a vocal effect that makes Prince voice seem child-like, the ghost of war and reality of imminent self-destruction rises up out of a danceable party hit.<br /><br />Lyrically, like a lot of Prince records, <em>1999</em> is uneven. Prince has never been what I consider a master lyricist, but as time went on he seemed to feel more comfortable being playful with language and using certain reversals and purposeful mispronunciation of words that really work. And sometimes his incredibly explicit lyrics are delivered with more success than others. But I have to admire someone who can sing "Girl's got an ass like I've never seen / And the ride. . . I said, the ride is so smooth, you must be a limousine!" <br /><br />In "Let's Pretend We're Married" he displays total willingness to disrupt his own rhyme schemes and the meter of his lyrics to cram in what he wants, how he wants (something that will become a signature of his songs to those with more than a passing familiarity with them - in that sense I think the occasional Dylan comparisons I have heard are accurate, but only in that very specific sense). For example, one repeated lyric is "My girl's gone and she don't care at all / And if she did, so what? Come on baby let's ball. . ." But before that is even established, he doesn't sing it that way, instead of "let's ball" he says "let's fuck, aw!" pronouncing that "fuck" with three squeezed syllables that take some kind of verbal gymnastics to make work. In the same song he dares to say, "I'm not saying this just to be nasty / But I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth." I never thought of this before, but the opening lyric to this song is "Excuse me, but I need a mouth like yours / To help forget the girl just walked out my door." Maybe there is even more of an oral sex theme in this song than I thought (though not like <em>Dirty Mind's</em> "Head" - great fucking song).<br /><br />"Let's Pretend We're Married" ends with a spoken tangent, which these long songs allow for, total drifting away from the song's theme. (Perhaps this is the "going astray" mentioned in the title track), and sometimes become really weird and kind of stream of consciousness. All of "All the Critics Love U In New York" is like this - just strange lyrics that make little sense over an electro-funk groove. "Look out all you hippies, you ain't as sharp as me / It ain't about the tripping, but the sexuality / Turn it up!"<br /><br />Speaking of funk, "D.M.S.R" (which was omitted from the original CD release of <em>1999</em>) has a great groove that is reminiscent of the afore-mentioned "Head." It is a total party funk song with call and response and with the bass, drums and shakers pumping along to the hooky refrain that you can imagine a packed dance floor calling back to. The backing vocals are brushed liberally with chorus in the mix to give that crowd feel. And like most funk songs, the lyrics don't have to be great, they just have to be fun. But don't get too comfortable, when he asks for "All the white people clap your hands on the four," he counts it out for them, mockingly. Also, the song ends with a distressed woman's voice begging, "Somebody call the police! Somebody help me please! Somebody help me!" There is that menace, that discomfort I was talking about.<br /><br />As I mentioned before, Prince's guitar is not as present on this record as we would come to expect from his post-Purple Rain period. In fact, "Little Red Corvette" is the only song on the album that has any real guitar solo to speak of (though "Lady Cab Driver" does have a synth and guitar trading off a lead at one point). Rather, in most of these tunes the guitar is light and rhythmic with little funk flares and tinkling progressions. We also get the mechanistic groove of "Automatic" - another dark dance tune that goes on and on, allowing Prince to play with computer sounds (including what sounds like a sampled staccato airplane engine on take-off that punctuates the song's development towards the end) and for some murmured call and response between him and the girls (Wendy and Lisa) "I pray that when U dream / U dream of how we kiss / Not with our lips, but with our souls."<br /><br />"Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" takes up the mechanistic feel, but at a much more frenetic pace in a way (like I said) that seems to channel Kraftwerk by pre-figuring Timbaland. This is a tune I didn't feel as much back in the day. While some of the soundss and words of the other songs are discomforting, the jerking rhythm of this song is not exactly "pop" friendly - at least not for that time period. It is one of those bad lover songs. "Some people tell me I got great legs / Can't figure out why you make me beg."<br /><br />One of the things I love about Prince is his (seemingly) casual use of gender-specific words or sayings. I mean, is it all that common to compliment a man on his legs? Saying someone has "great legs" is usually reserved for women, but in this case it doesn't matter (Similar to how on <em>Parade's</em> "Do You Lie?" he talks about lying awake in his "boudoir," he seems to not know or not care that by definition a boudoir is a <em>lady's</em> private bedroom or dressing room).<br /><br />Anyway, "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" conveys a sense of frustration and desperation that really works for the song, and the computer-y synthesized sounds help the human frailty of the lyric stand out in stark contrast. Again, this is an example of lyrics that aren't that strong on their own "I'll buy you clothes / I'll buy you fancy cars / But you gotta tell me who the hell you think you are" - but Prince makes them work with the raw delivery and willingness to scream. It is the kind of thing he would perfect on Purple Rain's "The Beautiful Ones" and "Darling Nicki."<br /><br />The weakest song on the album is the ballad "Free." I must admit to skipping past it most of the times I listen to the album these days (though I listened to it this morning on the way to work and again right now as I write this). The lyrics are definitely the weakest "Don't cry unless you're happy / Don't smile unless you're blue / Never let that lonely monster take control of you." Lonely monster? Ugh. Makes me a little nauseous with embarrassment just thinking about it (though interesting, some poor lyrics in "International Lover" don't have the same effect on me (see below). "Free" is an example of Prince's strangely conservative political side - or at least what comes off as superficial patriotism - something that shows up rarely and that changed later in his career - but songs like "Ronnie Talk to Russia" (off of <em>Controversy</em> - 1981) and "America" (off of <em>Around the World in a Day</em> - 1985) are also examples (by the time we get to "Family Name" off of 2001's <em>The Rainbow Children</em> he is veering more towards a dissenting view on race in America that basically pits all the racial minorities against white America in a powerful way). But "Free"? Again, ugh! The refrain "Be glad that you are free / Free to change your mind / Free to go most anywhere anytime / Be glad that you are free / There's many a man whose not / Be glad for what you have, for what you've got." The plodding ballad's monotonous melody and the "rousing" anthemic repetition of the chorus at the end of the song doesn't help either.<br /><br />"Lady Cab Driver" is another funky mid-tempo one. It is marked by a bridge that features the orgasmic moaning of woman in response to Prince saying "This one's [for this], this one's [for that]" and those "this" and "thats" range wildly and some make no sense as far as I can tell - "This one's for Yosemite Sam and the tourists that didn't land"? What the heck does that mean? My favorite one is "This is for how I wasn't born / like my brother handsome and tall" - I think I can just relate. Interestingly, only one of these orgasms he is "giving" the lady cab driver in question is for her. Again, there is that weird sense of menace - as if orgasms were being inflicted upon her, rather than some loving shared experience. He is venting some aggression sexually "This is for politicians who were born to believe in war," or "This one's for discrimination and egotistic things supreme / This one is for whoever taught you how to kiss in designer jeans."<br /><br />After the long and bizarre "All the Critics Love U in New York" (which segues from "Lady Cab Driver" nicely with traffic noise that alludes to New York City), we get that classic Prince lover-man ballad "International Lover" - which is ridiculous and awesome as you'd expect. There is a great tradition in soul music of taking gospel songs and influences and making them into love songs. "International Lover" takes that one step beyond and (in classic Prince style) makes it into nasty playful rave-up that plays up the whole dramatic presentation and winks all the way through with an airplane ride metaphor that was alluded to in "Automatic" and as does the smooth "limousine" ride of "Little Red Corvette." For some people, <em>Controversy's</em> "Do Me, Baby" is the classic song of this type, but for my money "International Lover" is better because it seems to have a little more awareness of its own absurdity, and is winking all along.<br /><br />Sure this song suffers from some poor lyrics, like Prince's penchant to rhyme "girl" with "diamonds and pearls" (something he would do as the title track of the 1991 album of the same name, e.g. "Diamond & Pearls) - but as I've said before, sometimes Prince can more than make up for a weak lyric with the pliability of his voice. Just listen to the way he sings "Baby" halfway through the second verse, or the way he pauses knowingly after the word "come" when asking "Don't you want to come. . . inside." <br /><br />But really to me, where this closing track shines most is in the spoken part that is in the guise of a airline pilot, but delivered like a pastor half-singing his sermon while the choir bolsters him with their voices (all of which sound like Prince overdubs). "Good evening. This is your pilot Prince speaking / You are flying aboard the Seduction 747 / and this plane is fully equipped with anything your body desires." And then it goes into these amazing faux-instructions like those a flight attendant gives before take-off. <br /><blockquote>For any reason there is a loss in cabin pressure<br />I will automatically drop down to apply more<br />To activate the flow of excitement<br />Extinguish all clothing materials<br />And pull my body close to yours, <br />put your lips upon my mouth and kiss, kiss<br />In the event there is over-excitement <br />your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device.</blockquote> <br />And later, as the song reaches its climax, he announces, "We are now making our final approach to satisfaction / Please bring your lips, your arms, your hips to the up and locked position / for landing." And particularly wink-wink at the end, "Please remain awake until the aircraft has come to a complete stop."<br /><br /><br />As someone who believes in the power of having music playing when you make love (and it is for that reason alone that I own a 5-disc CD changer), <em>1999</em> ranks up there are one of the best for that purpose. Overall the flow of the record is condusive to getting your groove on (sometimes slow, sometimes fast, grooving, crooning, jerking, shaking, hollering. .. ) - and maybe that is another reason why I think of this as a winter-time album (in addition to when I discovered it and the millenial nature of the title track that suggests New Year's Eve), it makes me want to stay in all day with a lover, listening and getting it on - staying warm and safe while playing dangerously - while the world outside freezes over.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-42079642443282175892008-05-31T15:27:00.001-04:002009-02-09T15:29:10.086-05:00Still I Remain Tied to the Mast. . .I am always looking for the language with which to explain what it is about particular music that I like. I understand that for many (most?) people music is a purely visceral experience – they either like it or they don’t, get used to it or not – but I like to think about why certain music appeals to me or doesn’t appeal to me, and sometimes in that thinking songs I once despised grow worthy of some kind of eccentric love, or songs I once loved unequivocally take on a tarnish that in time I work through and love <i>because</i> of the tarnish, not despite it.<br /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/osito71/pic/000214wh" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right"> Steely Dan is one of those bands people seem to have strong feelings about one way or another, but for me Steely Dan was one of those bands I grew to love as I learned to listen to it. Yes, it can seem like that breezy vapid bougie pseudo-jazz, and if you ever hear it as background music at a party then that is exactly what it is – It can serve that purpose. Easy. But I think any band that names itself after a dildo from Naked Lunch deserves an open-minded listen, and <i>Aja</i> is one of the finest albums ever produced. Period. It is just fine layered music with a kind of aplomb darkness at the center of that breeziness. The title track is just fun to listen to.<br /><br />I love how each verse has its little airy intro, almost tricking the ear into thinking the whole verse will be like that, but then picking up the tempo to finish the verse and go on to the refrain “Aja / when all my dime dancing is through / I run to you” and then the whole thing kind of dissolves back into that very tenuous melody of the intro section of the next verse. What I really love about the chorus is how the piano is doubling the vocal melody using rich chords, and the tom-toms on the drum-kit are tuned to them adding the perfect rhythmic harmonic weight to the words.<br /><br />The bridge, a long instrumental section after the second verse, has this perfect and simple two-chord progression that starts out on the guitar which uses repetition to upset aural expectation. A lead guitar plays over it with almost banal excellence, but it is those two chords that do it for me. It is just so languid, lazy, just barely keeping time. There is tension there, and the whole thing builds on that tension until the piano and those tuned toms I mentioned before are all hitting those two chords back and forth, forth and back, while the sax cuts in improvising over the top of it. The whole thing almost completely dissolves, again it threatens to become so fractured melodically it might disappear, but then little intro section of the third verse and back to the that picked-up tempo – but this time instead of dissolving again, the chorus takes up the two-chord refrain from the bridge in recapitulation, building on it more and more as the song fades out. <br /><br />But <i>Aja</i> is potent stuff. It is not an album I can listen to too often or too much. It is an album that demands attention, and as its slides into the background it almost becomes obnoxious. I mean, Michael McDonald’s harmonies on 'Peg' can be nauseating, and I mean that in a good way – I just have no other way of explaining it. Like yogurt, curdled and delicious… Perhaps it is schizophrenic music, and that is the reason for the strong reactions to it. Because if I am honest about it, as much as I love it in this moment of listening, I know there have been times I have had it come on one time too many in a given time frame and have felt sick of it, disgusted with its baroque pretensions – but again, in those moments I still know how good it is. Maybe it is too good…everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-69545680798912600172008-02-19T15:30:00.001-05:002009-02-10T08:30:37.340-05:00Heavy Rotation, Discerning EarThere are periods of time when we just groove on certain songs. Sometimes they are new songs off of new albums, or at least albums that are new to you, but other times they are old songs that have come back after a long hiatus. I'm mostly an album listener, so for me it is sets of songs that represent some year or years when it was on heavy rotation - but sometimes it is just some songs that I groove on that are from all over the place - a song here or there from those albums or artists that are in heavy rotation.<br /><br />I took some time tonight to just listen to those songs on their own.<br /><br />There's Wilco's "Shake it Off" from <i>Sky Blue Sky</i>, which is sick just for the juxtaposition of the almost nausea-enducing unbalanced chord progression against this sick groove that comes from the refrain, and over it all Jeff Tweedy's scratched out, just off key voice. I love it. I don't even know what it's about, and I love it. There is also "Hate It Here" off that same record, which in part sounds like a 70s Stones song. For a while I was calling it my work theme song because of the refrain goes: "Hate it here!", but that is backed up by "when you're gone" - so that part doesn't apply to my feelings for work. I just like the simplicity of the lyrics describing keeping the house clean to kill time. There is a (not-so-subtle the more I think about it) undercurrent of patriarchy in the song. While the song never comes out and says it, you can't help but think he never did those chores he lists when his woman was home. But I just love the yearning of "What am I gonna do when I run out of shirts to fold? What am I gonna do when I run out of lawn to mow? Oh, darling, what am I gonna do?"<br /><br />The whole record is great.<br /><br />But the song I've really been grooving on after a good ten or eleven year absence from the rotation is Prince's "<lj-cut text="If I Was Your Girlfriend.">If I Was Your Girlfriend." It's off <i>Sign o' the Times</i>, which is probably Prince's best album. It <i>is</i> the best if you ask me (as long as I am able to put <i>Purple Rain</i> into a special lengendary category that disqualifies it from the discussion, though there are cases to be made for <i>1999</i> and <i>Dirty Mind</i>, and don't even get me started on the <i>Black Album</i> which seems to be a direct result of all the things I love about <i>Sign o' the Times</i> with the peculiar muddiness to its sound, a darkness that is only occasionally broken by beautiful moments).<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/sign_o_the_times.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="4"> "If I Was Your Girlfriend" is muddy as muddy gets - anemic snare and a muted kickdrum, an echoing cascade of electronic handclap with a bit of repeated fuzzed out synth, and a bass line that is as occasionally erratic as it is always perfectly keeping the disparate parts in place. And then here comes Prince's voice crying across those sounds getting ready to do some pleading like a man has to not be ashamed to plead sometimes in that loverman universe we might sometime inhabit. But what I love about Prince is how he undermines standard roles of sexuality. He asks, his voice pitched up a bit in what might be his Camille* persona, "If I was your girlfriend would you remember? / And tell me all the things you forgot when I was your man?" He is creating a distinction between the role of boyfriend and that of "girlfriend" (in terms of a woman's "girlfriends"), but he is complicating the distinction by adding a sexual component to that "girlfriend" relationship. He is asserting a kind of pansexuality within the broader context of his stereotypical male desire to get with his lady.<br /><br />As the muddy parts continue, Prince uses a number of overdubs of bizarre voices to double certain lines for emphasis. They are bizarre in pitch and tone, sometimes a higher harmony, sometimes a very low one. Listen to: "If I was your one and only friend, / Would you run to me / If somebody hurt ya, / Even if that somebody / Was me?" And listen to that other voices move in around Prince's plea. Weird and effective. Take the darkness of the mix and the sparseness of the instrumentation, take some of those harmonies and homogenize them and give them to five guys to sing instead of a score of overdubs, and you have New Jack Swing, which would appear on the scene three or four years after this record. You can't tell me that Babyface and Teddy Riley weren't listening to <i>Sign of the Times</i> when it came out. Shit, wanna hear those harmonies cleaned up and shining like a Sunday morning while still steeped in that Prince playful mix of dark and light? Then check out "Adore" on the same record.** You can't tell me Boys II Men didn't crib some shit from that while sucking all the life out of it.<br /><br />The lyrics' characterization of friendship between women is actually kind of funny in its superficiality. This is especially true if you think about it as really representing Prince's view of what it is like. Helping her pick out her clothes, or "go[ing] to a movie and cry[ing] together." But at the same time, he does undermine himself and his own assertions. In the lines, "Baby, can I dress ya? / I mean, help you pick out your clothes / Before we go out?" there is tension between that aggressive masculine force and what he is portraying as a gentler helpful feminine force. Anyway, he follows that with, "I ain't sayin' ya helpless, / But sometimes those are the things that being in love's about." Again, mitigating that undercurrent of desire that keeps slipping to the front of the song. Those strange voices help to carry that masculine desire along beneath the main melody through tone, if not in content.<br /><br />The bridge comes to a breakdown of the beat to just that pissy kickdrum and some synth chords where we get to hear a little more about what girlfriends do, "Would you let me wash your hair? Could I make you breakfast sometime? I mean, can we just hang out, go to a movie and cry together?" Okay, I mentioned that line twice, though he does not sing it twice - He does ask about the dressing twice, the second time with more desperate abandon, pushing his voice up and down those three octaves he's mastered. The song builds to a conclusion, a spoken coda over a warbling synth part and that same beat and the indomitable bass. Again the lyrics ride the tension of girlfriend/boyfriend relationship between the speaker the person being spoken to: "Is it really necessary for me to go out of the room just because you want to undress? / We don't have to make children to make love, and we don't have to make love to have an orgasm."<br /><br />Let me take a breath here and say I love how coarse Prince can be, how he mixes profane and divine in a lot of his work, and isn't afraid to be nasty (at least until he became one of the 144,000). And he is going to get nasty in a good way as he further subverts the expected relationship dynamic to put himself in traditionally submissive role to the woman he sings to, while simultaneously keeping that dark aggressive, perhaps obsessive, undertone. "You could do it because I'm your friend. I'd do it for you. / Of course I'd get naked in front of you. / (And when I'm naked what should I do?)" The playfulness of it becomes cajoling. "How can I make you see that it's cool? / Can't you just trust me? / If I was your girlfriend you could. / Oh, yeah I think so. . ." That last part is interesting in that the cadence of its delivery implies that he is answering to something the woman said in response to "If I was your girlfriend you could." The warbling synth begins to rise in pitch and he begins to talk/sing faster. After he asks her what gets her off he says, "If I was your girlfriend would you tell me? / Would you let me see you naked then? / Would you let me give you a bath? / Would you let me tickle you so hard you'd laugh and laugh? / Would you let me kiss you there? You know, down there where it counts. . .? / I'll do it so good I swear I'll drink every ounce." Drink every ounce? While it can be literally taken to mean slurping up the juices while performing cunnilingus, drinking every ounce is something more akin to swallowing after a giving a blowjob. I think he is playing with those sexual roles and identities again, moving up and down a weird ass freaky continuum, and I can dig it. "Drinking every ounce" is something a boyfriend would expect a girlfriend to do, and now that he is in the role of "girlfriend" he needs to learn to submit to her desires. <br /><br />"And then I'll hold you tight and hold you long and together we'll stand in silence, and then we'll try to imagine what it looks like. Yeah, we'll try to imagine what silence looks like. . ." I have long been confused by that silence. Is it just a bit of Prince's occasional psuedo-meaningful lyricism? Or does it play on the taboo nature of the homosexual overtones? Is he just making reference to 'cuddling after' without coming out and saying it?<br /><br />"Yeah, we'll try to imagine. . ." And with a final fading handclap the song disintegrates into the opening descending tom-tom drums of "Strange Relationship."<br /><br />Ultimately, I think "If I was Your Girlfriend" is about a guy that realizes that his lack of sensitivity while in a relationship is what drove his woman away, but can't help but have that original coarse desire constantly re-emerge. He slides back and forth on this continuum between romance and friendship problematizing platonic relationships. <br /><br />I love how repeated listenings to a song can really open it up for you and make you understand it new ways. I don't necessarily mean lyrically (though that can happen), but I mean aurally. Take for instance, T.Rex's "Bang a Gong." Talk about a song I've heard played to death on classic rock stations, but I got the remastered version of <i>Electric Warrior</i> and I been playing it and Wow. . I understand why the song became the played out dinosaur it was by the time I was of an age to listen to some rock music. Get out a copy, put it on a good stereo. Listen to how tight that rhythm guitar is. That alone is worth the listen. Total control. Listen to the tambourine. I love tambourine. Listen to how it opens up for the chorus, the rhythm section spreading itself out across the low and middle end. It can be hard to describe music in words (though I guess I've been trying to do just that), but if you listen closely you will be able to hear some of the things I am talking about and a lot more that I am not. I love to listen for things deep in the mix of a song and then putting it back in with the rest and realizing what it accomplishes there.<br /><br />That kind of discerning/dissecting ear is not necessary to enjoy music, but I do feel that for me at least it lets me enjoy music a lot more deeply than I did before I developed that ear. . . In a lot of cases I have developed my own vocabulary for some of this stuff as I have had little formal musical training.<br /><br />Finally, there's Paul Simon's <i>Darling Lorraine</i>. I been playing it on guitar as well, but I can't seem to get enough of it, despite how depressing of a song it is. It is organic and clean as the Prince and T.Rex is dirty in sound. Handclaps (real ones), congas, ethereal guitar mixed with an acoustic tuned to almost sound like a marimba (or <em>is</em> there a marimba deep in there and its tone bleeds in and out of that acoustic? It is hard to tell. . .), and Paul Simon's voice kind of bare and unaffected, telling the story of the relationship of Frank and Lorraine alternately in the first and third person. Occasionally, a soft chorus emphasizes certain aspects of the lyrics with their harmonies. For example, there is a kind of call and response far back in the mix, once during each of the two refrains. These voices have a hint of the ghost of Ladysmith Black Mambazo in them - enough of a hint to make me worry he is repeating himself, but as suddenly as it is there, it is gone again. After each chorus the tight undercurrent of rhythm instruments drop out to let the guitars float for a few measures before it comes back in with that solid bass to move on at the same pace. This dynamic gives the sense of passing time between these episodes in the narrative. But Paul Simon is all about his lyrical proficiency laid atop strong rhythms (see most of <em>Graceland</em> and all of <em>Rhythm of the Saints</em>) that occasionally give way to provide a sense of dynamic movement and giving the rhythm a chance to come back accompanied by those energizing conga flares. This is especially true for the builds to the refrain which only come twice in the song. <br /><br />But before I get to that I wanted to mention that lyrical proficiency which seems to thrive equally with earnest straightforwardness as it does with beautiful little turns of phrase that stay with you and that make Paul Simon Paul Simon. For example, he mentions "the sin of impatience" when talking about meeting Lorraine, which evokes the possibility of hasty choice to fall in love with someone and adds a sense of tension to the wavering devotion to Lorraine that Frank expresses throughout the song in response to her increasingly tepid feelings - But before we get that far there is still the matter of the narrative of their relationship itself, and in those cases he makes do with lyrics as "talky" and straightforward as "Anyway, Lorraine and I got married / And the usual marriage stuff."<br /><br />When Frank speaks in the song he is often contradicting or correcting himself, which makes him a bit untrustworthy (as in when he says, "All my life I been a wanderer / Not really, I've mostly lived in my parents' home"), but more than that I think it reflects a transitory sense of emotions, or perhaps a simultaneity of emotions that are normally considered opposites - as in when he claims to not need Lorraine or to be "sick to death" of her, but goes on to say "I long for your love" immediately afterwards. Or the juxtaposition of the growing disgust and disillusionment with the relationship with his still loving her, and finally caring for her in her illness (cancer?) that comes in the last verse.<br /><br />The Refrain: The rhythm builds with those conga flares, deeper kickdrum and arpegiated chords on the guitar, giving the illusion of increased tempo, but really just building the energy to help when he spits out his confused and angry, "What!? You don't love me anymore? What?! You're walking out the door?" in response to being told "I'm tired of being darling Lorraine." <br /><br />The bridge is over a similar floating guitar part which has a temporary reprieve from the conflict and consternation of the rest of the song: "On Christmas morning Frank awakes / To find that Lorraine has made a stack of pancakes / They watch the television / Husband and wife / All afternoon it's a wonderful life." There are slight touches of woodwinds to give that wintery Christmas feel, and it ends on a bright D major in comparison to the D minor the verses usually end on - but this brightness builds as the tempo goes back to normal and the other guitars come back with the conga flares and the muted kickdrum back to the refrain. I love his reference to Capra to evoke a kind of bittersweet "what might have been" before going back to the conflict that the refrain brings with it.<br /><br />In the end what I like most about this song is that is neither a straight up "oh, I love you, we were meant to be together" song, nor is it a "You broke my heart. I hate you" song. It is more of a "Relationships don't always work out, but that doesn't mean there isn't love and caring mixed in with the regret and recriminations" kind of song. In other words, it feels more <i>real</i> to me. <br /><br />I could write about a lot more songs, but those are the ones that have been on the heavy rotation lately. Maybe in a year or so (or whenever the list significantly changes or expands) I'll write about some more.<br /><hr><br /><font size="1">* Camille. Usually represented by a slightly speeded up voice, though in some live versions of Bob George he sings in an electronically twisted deep voice as Camille. Camille is basically Prince's alter ego. His version of Sir Nose of Funk, his dark side. Camille's sexuality is also more pronouncedly bisexual.<br /><br />** I almost wrote about "Adore," but that song is perennially in my heavy rotation. It is a song that Randy Newman mentions when he talks about songwriting he admires, and again it is about that playfulness and that in-your-face-ness; the tensions in the music. Also, my favorite recorded human sound is in that song (at 2:48), and the horns and some of the harmonies will make you cry if you listen close enough. It just might be my favorite example of singing ever.</font></lj-cut>"everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-21282657749402231672006-02-18T15:43:00.003-05:002009-02-09T16:52:20.446-05:00Listening. . . Remembering<img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/taj.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3">I love waking up on a Saturday morning fixing some coffee, and just putting on albums. Album after album, running through my collection of CDs and LPs, sometimes going by artist, feeling like listening to nothing but Prince - a sampling of his records from the self-titled one with "<i>I Wanna Be Your Lover</i>" on it (I really detest his first album "For You") all the way up through "<i>The Rainbow Children</i>" or "<i>Musicology</i>". Other times it is just albums I feel I haven't listened to in a long time. Ben Folds Five's "<i>Whatever and ever, Amen</i>" or Taj Mahal's "<i>Giant Step/Old Folks in De Home</i>". When was the last time I listened to Fishbone's self-titled first record? Or how about Boogie Down Productions' '<i>Criminal-Minded</i>' or Public Enemy's '<i>It takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back</i>'? (How can you not love that title?) Those records just pop out to my eyes as I scan the titles, so I load up the 5 disc changer and let it rip - just laying on my sofa with my eyes closed, listening closely - sometimes sitting up and singing along, sometimes standing and dancing and singing along - sometimes my mind wanders and the next thing I know more than half the song that was on has passed - sometimes I back that shit up and listening again from the beginning - sometimes I let slide.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/fishbone.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3"> It is such a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon. Experiencing the music in the moment of listening and occasionally letting yourself slip away into the nostalgia of some of those albums. I will never be able to listen to This Mortal Coil's '<i>Filigree & Shadow</i>' without thinking of lying in the dark in my loft bed in my freshman college dorm room with girlfriend at the time, awkwardly fumbling to undo the buttons of her blouse to reveal those forbidden breasts. I remember having my smooth moment foiled by the size of them. You see, I got great practice unsnapping bras when I was growing up. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/bdp.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3"> My mother would come home exhausted from her job and call me into the bedroom and she'd be standing there, back to me, her blouse hiked up in the back, so I could unsnap her bra, too tired to reach back and do it herself. When I was very young I never thought of it as weird, but when I was little older I always did it reluctantly - but one does not refuse my mother lightly - anyway, at around 11 my older brother told me that I should start practicing doing it one handed as the skill might come in handy one day. I became an expert. I could undo those two snaps with a quick flick of three fingers. And after I got good at doing it right-handed, I started doing it left-handed.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/TMC.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3"> But that two-snap bra was the only kind of bra I had any experience with. I just assumed they were all like that, so that first night as a freshman, as I drew off her blouse and reached to the back of the bra, I did my deft flick and undid two snaps. . . But there were three! I even said, all confused, "<i>There are three?</i>" And suddenly shy again, she folded her arms about her breasts and looked down as This Mortal Coil's version of Judy Collins' '<i>Ohio</i>' came on. It is emblazoned in my memory. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/bigblack.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="right" hspace="3"> Don't worry we overcame the awkward moment and I got to behold her in all her double-D glory.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/kraftwerk.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3"> I am never going to be able to listen to Big Black's '<i>Hammer Party</i>' without thinking those blue-dot blotters I took with my roommate later that same school year. Damn, I used to gobble that stuff up like it was nothing. I was used to it, but it was his first time and I was called away to deal with a 'girlfriend situation'. There I was arguing with her about tripping while I was tripping in a study lounge in her dorm. I trying to alleviate the situation and told her it was no big deal (<i>she was a small town girl. She didn't have experience with this kind of thing - Oh, and I am talking about a different girl here</i>) and succeeding, and even getting her to laugh and fool around a little when her roommate comes to knock on the door of the study lounge. My roommate had called their room. He was listening to Big Black and freaking out. I begged off and ran back to my dorm to rescue him from the mental horrors he was inflicting on himself, lying balled up in one corner of the futon mumbling, "I'm a steel worker. I kill what I eat." He was okay. I just needed to come back and remind him to have fun. The funny thing is I have never really liked Big Black before that - but from that moment on I was a fan, and still am. I think none of the music that it spawned of various industrial modes ever surpasses it for pure snide unfocused expression of anger and dissatisfaction with everything. We are talking 1989-90 here folks. I had a lot of that. Come to think of it, I still do.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/pinkfloyd.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3"> It is hard to come up with more recent examples. I mean, music was so much a part of my development as a person, especially in my teens and early twenties, when an album could mean so much. I will never be able to listen to Kraftwerk's '<i>Trans-Europe Express</i>' without thinking about being about 7 years old and sneaking my older brother's records when he wasn't home and trying to mix two copies of them. I really think that track was the perfect introduction to electronic music and those kinds of beats for a kid because it was about a train, and what seven year old boy doesn't love trains? And how many times did I listen to Pink Floyd's 'the Wall' at age 15 lying in my bunk bed feeling sorry for myself and thinking myself an eternal outsider? It is for that reason it is hard for me to listen to that record these days without associating it with that self-obsessed melodrama that would be embarrassing if it wasn't excused by the fact that I was only 15 years old.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/flaminglips.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3"> But I hope that that is not the end of such experiences and memories regarding albums. And, now that I think of it, I know it won't be - because I just remembered the repeated listening of the Flaming Lips' '<i>Soft Bulletin</i>' when I was sick with the flu in early 2003, and becoming overwhelmed by the sounds of it, and the yearning in Wayne Coyne's voice that echoes my own (yearning, that is - not my voice). And those repeated listenings of those albums that come to mean so much and have such strong associations also reveal new aspects to the music every so often, some track or trick of production, some other voice or sound deep in the mix that I had never noticed before.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/bully/albumcovers/wilco.jpg" height="150" width="150" align="left" hspace="3">Ah, the Taj Mahal record just ended. . . I love that I've forgotten what comes on next. . . Oh! '<i>Yankee Hotel Foxtrot</i>'. I love it.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-28913352507413285982005-09-29T16:18:00.001-04:002009-02-10T09:06:42.956-05:00Do You Realize?Crossing Manhattan Bridge this morning on the D-train, listening to the Flaming Lips on my mp3 player, listening to the echoing words "<em>the sun eclipsed behind the clouds</em>", I admired the awkward off-balance perch of brown-haired nerdy girl with her hair in a bun and her black glasses close to her eyes, looking like an emaciated turtle in her blackish-green ribbed high-necked sweater, as she leaned against the door crammed into place by me and the rest of the commuting crowd. I admired the high clouds, puffy and distant, as if spying on the weather on the far-away land of the Bronx. I watched the cars skate up and down the FDR and was filled with one of the strongest feelings of being monkey-man-me that I have felt in a long time. Thinking that everyone of those driving apes has his own banana tree to worry about, or maybe some don't have one and that is their worry, but here is one thing that <em>is</em> true: Most of them have forgotten, maybe never known, that it is all just bananas.<br /><br />Just friggin' bananas.<br /><br />The Flaming Lips ask "<em>Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?</em>" And for a second I do, and then consider all the ape-people that have come and gone and are now forgotten. How many generations does it take for the average person to be completely forgotten? I mean, it must vary from person to person and how close they were with their families, how close and/or large their circle of friends was - but still it cannot be very long. I would think three would be a lot for most people. But how many spinster aunts and bachelor uncles, crotchety old grandfathers and weird loner guys that lived in the basement apartment that everyone called "Slosky", even though it said "Rodgers" on his mailbox are never thought of again by any living person, unless it might be wondering who they are when their photo is come across in an old shoebox when your own parents die. There you are at age 6 making a funny face for the posed pictures beside the Christmas tree in 1977 with your brother and sister and this <em>strange</em> person. . . There is no one left to ask.<br /><br />I once heard <em>mi abuela</em> bemoaning the fact that her large collection of family photos will likely be thrown away when she dies because no one else cares, and even if they did no one knows who all those people are anymore; no one but her. But I want those photos. It is strange how I have little desire to meet most of my extended family, but I don't want to lose the tenuous connections themselves - the relations. . . I want to go through all those albums with <em>mi abuela</em> and tape little index cards beneath each photo listing who is in the photo and their relation to each other and to my immediate family.<br /><br />But it is really hard to sit down and do something with your grandma that is for when she dies - even if the fact that she will die eventually and probably (even <em>hopefully</em>) sooner than the rest of the family is undeniable. She has lore, but sometimes it is difficult to harvest. She gets tired, and even I find the process of the telling of stories and the answering of my questions emotionally draining. So much of it comes down to how fucked up people can be to each other, and how people coped when fucked up shit happened. Murder, rape, child abuse, spouse abuse, rumor, innuendo, infidelity, poverty, alcoholism - those are the stories my grandma has to tell. And yet, there is still something beautiful about them - like the spiraled sparkles in a shattered window glass.<br /><HR><br />My mind wandered back to when I first started listening to <em>Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots</em>. I remember liking the first three or four songs, but thinking the rest of the album kind of all blended together. It took a while before I discovered the gems of that second half of the record - realizing the texture and layered depth of sound they had - the obvious <em>almost</em> cheesy <em>almost</em> cliche <em>almost</em> simple lyrics - that somehow cuts through all those things to just be earnest and raw. <br /><br />And it struck me that that time it took to discover that second half was the unintended consequence of unintended consequences. <br /><br />I am an album listener. Rarely am I in the mood for a single song - and I never use the random feature on a playlist on iTunes or whatever - I like hearing a record from beginning to end - and when I hear a song taken out of the context of its album I automatically begin to hear the next song on the album as the song ends - as if it were to start up - I anticipate it. <br /><br />Because of this, most often when I do not have time to hear an entire album in a short time, the next time, I listen to it from the beginning again - with CDs and records this is no problem - but I grew up in the era of the tape - of rewind and fast-forward and flipping. Because of the pain in the ass of that - back in the days, it was more likely to hear a single side of an album at a time and when you came back to it - listen to the other side. Album sides had themes and feels of their own - think about how overrated side one of Led Zeppelin IV is compared to side two . . . This flip requirement had the unintended consequence of making me listen to songs on a second side more often - or even <em>prefer</em> a second side - so the unintended consequence of the tape cassette machine - the laziness or impatience of not wanting to wait for a tape to rewind led to one thing - and then the loss of that with the advent of CDs led to another.<br /><br />It seems to me that so much of life is like that - handling an inconvenience in one way which leads to something potentially positive - but when the inconvenience is eliminated that is lost and you miss the coping mechanism. Heh, in some cases that leads to addiction.<br /><br />We stumbled out of the D train on Broadway-Lafayette and I climbed the steep steps two at a time as I always do weaving in and out of lines of one step-at-a-timers and I could not help but laugh out loud momentarily filled with joy for this personal moment of awareness of the finite nature of my life, my memory, my ability to take in information of all kinds of a day to day basis. The thought and the moment felt better than any moment I could wait for or even imagine.<br /><br />Somehow, the <em>almost</em> unbearable, <em>almost</em> crushing, <em>almost</em> soul-numbing, often enraging aspects were cut right through by <em>being</em>.everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-6240743555159944062005-07-22T15:54:00.000-04:002009-02-09T15:57:22.064-05:00You Can Feel It All Over<strong>I love music.</strong><br /><br />I mean, as much as I love sex, and anyone that knows me knows how much I love that ridiculous mix of humping, submission, domination and hilarity, I would still have to rank music just above it. I mean, music is great because the emotional and intellectual components are equally valid in the appreciation of it.<br /><br />When I am listening to a song I love I just want the world to stop. I want nothing to interrupt it. It might be the only quality of mine that has remained constant from my teen years. I remember more than one argument with my mom stemming from her coming into my room while I was listening to music and talking to me. I'd always say, "<em>Can't you wait for the album to be over? Or at least wait for the gap between songs?</em>"<br /><br />It always annoyed me that people might be hesitant to interrupt you if you are watching a movie, and wait for a commercial if you are watching TV, and might even apologize for the interruption if you are in the middle of reading a book, but listening to music? It seems to be rated very low in importance to people. It is often viewed as a background kind of thing. . . but not for me. I am boggled by people I see on the subway reading while they listen to their iPods. How can you concentrate on the music? Oh yeah, I forgot, most popular music these days does not have much depth to it musically or lyrically, and when it does it is easily ignored. We search for similarities and the replaying of patterns in all things, not for the uniqueness of it.<br /><br />The thing with music for me is that I have this desperate need to try to share the experience that I cannot understand. When I listen to a particular song and I get a particular feeling or set of feelings from it, and when I can appreciate some musical aspect of it, or some set of aspects that intertwine in such a way to instigate that chemical rush of joy in my brain, I want someone else to listen to it and get that exact same feeling. In other words, I want an impossibility.<br /><br /><strong>Example:</strong> One of my favorite songs lately has been David Byrne's "<em>Glass, Concrete and Stone</em>". When he sings, "<em>So I'm puttin' on aftershave / nothin' is out of place / gonna be on my way / Try to pretend, it's not only / Glass and concrete and stone. . .</em>" There is just something that resonates with me and how I see the world, or how I try to see the world when it does not overwhelm me. I feel like everyday I must force myself to pretend that this is not all just glass and concrete and stone, that the stuff people make has meaning and matters. And there is something about the timbre of his voice when he sings it, something plaintive and real that shakes me down deep inside with echoes of both joy and sadness.<br /><br />And then there are songs that so tightly parallel my own mind that I can only feel envy that I did not write it myself. "<em>Civilization</em>", also from David Byrne's "Grown Backwards" album is an example of this. I mean, a song that questions what it means to be human/civilized and the rituals and customs we take for granted and examines them from a point of view that is both detached and intimately involved in terms of the "story" of the song (The narrator of the song is on a date at a restaurant) is not an easy thing to make work, and he makes it work so well, I cannot help but admire it, even as it melts me and steels me to the world at the same time. When he sings, "<em>Part of me wants to jump and shout / Part of me wants to tear it down</em>" I always smile, because I think the same thing about society every friggin' day.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/beethoven6.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="left" height="195" width="195"> But is not just about lyrics and singing. I can listen to a production of Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the Pastoral (my favorite) and the awe I feel is never diminished by the number of times I have listened. For me, the key to appreciating music on intellectual/technical level is being able to break apart a piece of music into its component elements mentally as you are listening to it and then slowly have your ear bring the individual parts together seeing how they fit, setting mood and theme, by means of becoming more than the sum of its parts. This is a skill I trained myself to have when I began listening to jazz in my late teens, and when I figured out that I could apply it to all kinds of music it was like a whole new world was opened up to me. I remember Zooey and I used to play this game where we'd be listening to music and challenge each other, "<em>Listen to the bass line</em>", or "<em>Listen to the high hat</em>", or "<em>Just high hat and bass drum</em>". The best part about doing this was discovering sounds seemly hidden in the melange of instruments. "<em>What is that?</em>" Or, "<em>Wow. That third harmony sounds like was recorded down a long hallway. I wonder what made him record it that way?</em>"<br /><br />And yet, these experiences and feelings of music (I guess, like all experiences and feelings) are unique to me and not really conveyable. In a way, it is a lot like a feeling I get in "serious" romantic relationships, an inability to feel like I can truly convey the depth of my feelings - a sense that expressions of feelings do not so much echo as they are swallowed into the abyss of human solitude never to return. And of course, I am an abyss as well. But that doesn't really matter much anymore as I feel all but a complete inability to love - so if that feeling ever returns I should be happy just to have it.<br /><br />Just like I should just be happy to have songs and pieces of music that speak to me so profoundly, and not worry about how it makes anyone else feel.<br /><br />But I guess we all want something or someone to legitimize our feelings. . .everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4088801345762982157.post-11223262070640669602005-04-07T16:03:00.001-04:002009-02-09T16:17:00.985-05:00Dig if you will the picture. . .<strong>It must be springtime, because I have been listening to Prince almost non-stop.</strong><br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/dirty_mind.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">Prince, no matter what his name was at the time, has been my most consistant love in music since I was 11 years old. I remember being home alone playing with my LEGO<SUP><FONT SIZE="-1">TM</FONT></SUP> <em>Galaxy Explorer</em> on the living room floor, listening to the little radio I had gotten for Christmas that year, when "<em>1999</em>" came on and I was like "Wow, what is this music?" I wouldn't listen to the whole album for many years, but the title track and songs like "<em>Little Red Corvette</em>" were enough for me to be paying attention when "Purple Rain" came on the scene a couple of years later.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/1999.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">Damn, Purple Rain is one of the best albums of all time. When I think about 26 year old Prince fucking rocking the world with that collection of songs and blowing people away with live performances, and how tight a band the Revolution was I feel a streak of envy rise in me. I mean, sure the movie is ridiculous and the only moral I have ever been able to gleen from it, is that when your dad abuses you mom and tries to kill himself, and your girlfriend is on the verge of leaving you for your scummy rival Morris Day after you slapped her around, your band hates you and your career is going nowhere because you only want to do things on your own terms, if you play "Purple Rain" at a show everything will turn out okay.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/purple_rain.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="left">And not only is the album great, but the B-sides off the singles from that ablum are among his best, I mean, come on "<em>Erotic City</em>"? (on the flip of "Let's Go Crazy"), or "<em>God</em>" (on the flip of "Purple Rain"), or "<em>Another Lonely Christmas</em>" (which accompanied "I Would Die 4 U") or the under-rated "<em>17 Days</em>" (on the other side of one of the best songs ever produced "When Doves Cry")<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/parade.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">Oh and speaking of "When Doves Cry" I remember spending the summer with my older brother and his then wife in 1984, and this video show used to come on right around my bedtime, but when the video for the song would come on, my sister-in-law would come and get me to watch it because she knew how much I loved it. I remember being a little disturbed by his crawling naked on the bathroom floor, but at the same time I was so fascinated by Prince's style and his mix of soul, R&B, rock and "new wave" elements.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/sign_o_the_times.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">But there is so much Prince to listen to. . . Both "Around the World in a Day" and "Parade (Music from the second worst movie ever made, uh. . . I mean, 'Under the Cherry Moon')" have some great songs on them, but it is "<em>Sign o' the Times</em>" which followed those two which is probably my favorite Prince album.<br /><br />Oh, step back: While "Kiss" is the song everyone knows off of Parade - "<em>Mountains</em>" is the best song on that album.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/lovesexy.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">Anyway, while Prince produced his own albums from the very beginning (he would only sign to a label that gave him full control - even though he was only 19 or 20 at that time, and Warner Bros were the only ones that would do it) it was not until "Sign o' the Times" when his production moved from serviceable to masterful - and his varying stripped down and lush and layered arrangements impress me every time - and this actually gets me to the point of this whole diatribe which suffers from a digression into my chronological exposure to Prince's music - which is, that from that point on listening to any Prince album on headphones, or on a really good stereo is a divine aural experience.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/symbol.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right"> The touches that can be heard; the layered voices in gospel swoon, each one an example of his four octave voice that projects with equal strength whether it is his low bass growl or his falsetto soprano ringing - the rich and varied instrumentation, whether it be a funky-fat-ass bassline, or arpeggiated strings. Listen to that distorted over the top bass drum on "Housequake" or chilling vocals on "<em>Adore</em>" and you will know what I mean. . .and speaking of "<em>Adore</em>", it is also a great example of his lyrical proficiency. I mean, the playfulness he allows himself in an otherwise straightforward lover-man ballad shows an ability to poke fun of himself in his music, even if he comes off as not being able to do that in his life. His growled little aside in that song, that follows his singing, "<em>You can burn up my clothes / Smash up my ride</em>" that goes "<em>Well, maybe not the ride</em>" is like a little parenthetical reality check.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/gold.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">Or his cute little reference to Joni Mitchell's "<em>Catch me I Think I'm Falling (in Love)</em>" in "<em>The Ballad of Dorothy Parker</em>" which works so well is another example (and interestingly the song has nothing to do with the real Dorothy Parker - and from what I have read he did not even know who she was - he just liked the name).<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/emancipation.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="right">I can come up with a ton of examples from nearly every one of his albums after that - and after countless times listening to all of them I still discover new things layered in the production that amaze me in not only how they sound and work for the song - but in how the hell he even thought to do it to begin with. Check out "<em>Jam of the Year</em>" on <em>Emancipation</em> - which starts with a cheesy sounding drum machine, becomes a live drum kit somehow without ever giving away the transition unless you are just waiting and listening for it, and then I discovered years later that later in the song the drum kit become congas for four measures before going back. Flawless.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aquerra.com/general/covers/rainbow_children.jpg" hspace="3" vspace="3" align="left">I know some people tend to say that they like Prince's early stuff the most, but usually when they say that they are really talking about his middle period (let's say "1999" thru "Batman"), as his first five albums are very different (and no less brilliant), but his later albums have some great great stuff and whatever he lost in pop sensibility he made up for with craftsmanship and risk-taking. Hell, even his bizarre inconsistent Jehovah's Witness opus "<em>The Rainbow Children</em>" has some incredible stuff on it (like "<em>Family Name</em>") and definitely is the furthest out there - and ostensibly throw-away albums made to fulfill his contract and "get his name back" have some hot tracks, like "<em>Come</em>". And Musicology's "<em>If Eye Was The Man In Ur Life</em>" is what pop music should sound like. Yes, there are Prince albums I do not like - like "<em>Chaos & Disorder</em>" (aptly named) and "<em>New Power Soul</em>".<br /><br />So, all I am trying to say is that spring and summer are my times when my obsession with Prince's music comes back and I listen to his albums endlessly. I love an afternoon spent in the park or on the fire escape just listening to album after album on the headphones and doing nothing but taking it all in and discovering new things that make me gasp. And plus, aside from Marvin Gaye, who's catalog is not as deep due to his untimely death and other career issues, who else are you going to find as many dirty songs as you are song about god/love?<br /><br /><em>"Mama's in the short dress, blowing in the breeze / Papa's just praying for the gust that'll bust that butt out, Please!"</em>everyonesfromnowonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09807797566748218905noreply@blogger.com0